Why God Rescues People From Dire Circumstances and 5 Ways We Can Be an Extension of God’s Provision
God is the model of protection.
Psalm 68 says: 4 Sing to God, sing praises to His name; lift up a song to Him who rides through the deserts; His name is the Lord; exult before Him! 5 Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation. 6 God settles the solitary in a home; He leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land. 7 O God, when You went out before Your people, when You marched through the wilderness, Selah. 8 the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel.
When you do downtown ministry, you run into a lot of heartbreaking family situations. I remember meeting one young guy, fresh out of high school, whose foster family had disowned him because they stopped getting assistance checks from the government to care for him. He was homeless because, after they stopped helping him, he had nowhere to go. He eventually found work that took him out of state, and my prayer is that he still has a way to provide for himself.
In the Old Testament, there were a lot of invaders, plunderers, and despicable people who did despicable things to God’s people that left them helpless or severely limited on providing for themselves. This psalm celebrates the promises of God to be with His people in their greatest times of need and to provide and care for them. As time went on, systems were set up to follow God’s rules and regulations on providing for the least of people, to test their resolve in following God’s Word at certain worldly cost, and to unite the nation of Israel as the people of God and as an extension of God’s mercy.
That mission has passed on to God’s New Testament church, a thanksgiving for the great mercy of Jesus Christ, and an honorable way in which we extend the compassion of our God to those who need it most.
People find themselves helpless, fatherless, widowed, homeless, imprisoned and oppressed for a lot of reasons, oftentimes beyond their control. It doesn’t take very long for a sense of desperation to kick in. When you’re out of options, you’ll do most anything to survive.
I believe one of the reasons that God helps to rescue people from dire circumstances, either Himself or by His call to His church (people and organizations) is so that, when desperation kicks in, people won’t resort to evil to satisfy their basic needs.
How, then, can we as a church, embody a set of values that preaches, teaches, and lives by helping people see that God does provide?
(1) We need to teach people what daily bread is
Daily bread means your daily needs are satisfied. Your needs to make it to the next day. So many people beyond our borders are praying for that simple provision while others keep adding to the list of what they consider a need.
Too many people confuse the American dream with daily bread. The allure of the white picket fence and a place in suburbia or higher can lead to dissatisfaction with their current car, house, family, job, and on and on. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to achieve more, but when we don’t feel our daily bread is satisfied, we can miss out on being content with God’s plans for us.
If we are to teach what daily bread, we need to believe that our daily bread is satisfied as well. We need to understand what contentment is.
(2) We need to communicate that it’s OK to ask for help
Pride motivates but it also destroys. It is commendable to want to be able to provide for our families or ourselves, but we live in a world where the service industry (doctors, lawyers, financial planning) flourishes. We all have needs to be met that we can’t do ourselves, so let’s be an extension of the service industry.
If we can communicate that the church can satisfy a temporary need like in the service industry (we don’t always need a doctor or a lawyer) then people might feel less-stigmatized in those times of desperation. We should be at the top of their thinking, not as a crutch, but as a place known for responding with compassion.
(3) We need to teach people how to lay down jealousy, envy, and greed
Entitlement is ruining our lives. Satisfaction is a lost value. If we can figure out where the world fails in someone’s life, we can point them to the hope, peace, and restoration in our Lord that they need to want to lay down these negative attributes.
Are we doing them ourselves?
(4) We need to not pass the buck when it gets tough
Too many churches pass the buck because they feel they’re not equipped to deal with certain needs. This, in my opinion, is why nothing seems to change, because the church has been taught that there’s always another organization better equipped to handle someone’s needs. What if there isn’t? What if there is, but it’s something we can do? What does it say to someone when we immediately refer them somewhere else? Nothing gives a poorer taste in someone’s mouth than being passed from person to person or organization to organization. Think about when you call a customer service hotline; isn’t it irritating to be passed from department to department? People can feel like their lives are being put on hold when we keep referring people to someone else.
If we don’t pass the buck, might there be more of a trust in God’s church as an extension of God’s provision? If we could gain that trust as a global church, imagine what people might think twice about doing when they feel let-down by those seeking to take advantage of them.
It’s time to learn.
(5) We need to practice more patience
We all come from different walks of life. Someone’s experience is the opportunity to hear their story. It is our opportunity to learn how to communicate God’s grace to people different and the same. If we are willing to have patience, it just might help our evangelistic efforts and we might gain insight into why the government and not churches are people’s first phone call when they need help. That should be enough to motivate churches around the world to respond with patience.
Imagine what patience could say to someone who thinks we’re just one more judgmental person waiting to chastise them in their time of need.
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What if the church could be the extension of God’s provisional grace and mercy, so much so, that people would cease to live out of a sense desperation? What if people believed that God is bigger than our needs? What if people believed that they didn’t have to make the wrong choices just to survive? What if we could help people redefine what is important and what is necessary? That is God making an impact on our world and upon us. That is God’s grace winning. Amen.
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