Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Prayer to Suffer, Pt. 1

I have an optimistic vision for the future of the Church. The youth are rising up and preparing to take their place in the leadership. They are no longer satisfied with this thing we’ve made, this hypocrisy. They are longing for the gritty, honest, hard, sold-out truth.
They are looking to throw aside rituals, the politics, the rules, all the baggage, even themselves to chase with full abandonment, the new dream. The Christian Dream.
This generation has seen where the American Dream has led Christianity and they are done with it. Instead, they want to give up on that manifesto and seek biblical truth and biblical driven dream that makes up a true Christ-follower. They are believing whole heartedly that they are to die to themselves, carry their crosses and seek God above all else.  They want Jesus and only Jesus. None of the “fluff”.
They want nothing to do with the prosperity gospel. This group plans to to take the church to its knees and begin again with a true gospel-driven, Acts living agenda. We aren’t talking about a division or a new sect. We are talking about a revolution from within. There will be no compromising. It’s Christ or bust.
These people are patriots to God. Willing and hoping to lose it all to Christ’s glory. I’m one of them. Interested?


This all comes down to this. If the bible is true, then how can we deny verses like Luke 9:57-62. What about 1 Peter 4:12? How is it that we see all through Acts 2:42-47 the believers living the way they do and God adding to the saved daily, yet we seem to ignore it?  Jesus showed us the way to live. He wasn’t rich, yet he was eternally wealthy
We hide behind our talks of abundance and blessing but do we really understand it? God gives us our abundance to steward and use to glorify Him and meet the needs of those around us! Not to watch Flat Screens, spend our money on fast-food and waste our time and money. No. I believe Jesus would look in disgust at such things.
Not with the following facts:
6.8 BILLION people alive on Earth.
Liberal estimate has 1/3 population Christians. (This isn’t talking true Christ-followers, but EVERYONE who says they are Christian, regardless of anything else. However, for the sake of this, we will pretend all 1/3 are living for Christ.)
That leaves 4.5 BILLION people who are lost and on a path to a eternal Hell.
That’s not all though. Let’s look past spiritual need and look at physical need.
850 Million people will go to bed hungry every night.
11 Million kids will die before their 5th birthday.
This means 30,000 kids die daily from hunger and preventable diseases.
This means 1 kid every 3 second dies. 1…2…3… gone.
In some countries 1 in 5 kids die during childbirth.
20% of the world has no access to clean water.
1.6-2.5 million children die of diarrhea that is preventable every year.
In the least developed countries the average literacy rate is 51%
Afghanistan for women has a literacy rate of 12%
More than 1/2 of Africans do not have access to even basic modern health facilities.
This results in 10 million deaths per year from the four most common preventable diseases. Such as Diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria and measles.
Many countries do not have life expectancies beyond age 30.
Other countries, only 10% of the ENTIRE country is able to be formally employed.
Now for the real kicker.
1 Billion live on less than $1 a day.
2 Billion live on $1-2 dollars a day.
1 Billion live on $2-4 dollars a day.
4 out of 6.8 BILLION people are living on less that FOUR dollars a day.
Quoting a book by Peter Greer and Phil Smith “The wealthy, and that includes everyone reading this, lead lives that many of the four billion living on less than 4 dollars a day consider an unreachable dream.”
Can we truly say we are loving thy neighbor as thy self and saying we are caring for the least when we look at all we have and how much they are in need?  I can’t. I’m not sure Jesus would either. Think about it. I’m not done with this. Be ready for more.

Much Love,
Luke

3 comments:

Patrinas Pencil said...

Your're on a roll here, Luke! Good for you.. I agree, the youth are going to take back this nation for Christ and the TRUTH will stand!!

I fell the wind of the Holy Spirit stirring things up!!!

Patrina <")>><
His watchman on the wall

Anonymous said...

Amen to that, Luke. I pray that this burden to live out Acts will catch on. We must pray for this to be sustained by the Holy Spirit.

-Liz

Luke said...

Patrina: Thank you! =) God has really been putting this on my heart lately! =D

Liz: Amen! Acts living isn't how it "should" be. It's how it has to be.

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