How are we good news to the poor?

How are we good news to the poor? How are you good news to the poor? How can we be good news to the poor?

We can preach Preach the gospel Preach to bring about change

James 2: 2-5 “For if a someone comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor person in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, "You sit here in a good place," and you say to the poor person, "You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?”

James 2: 14-17 What good is it, brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

We are to be incarnational God with skin on

We are to be compassionate To suffer with

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” Henry Nouwen

We need to know the poor Do you know the poor? The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few

Acts 4: 32 All the believers were one in heart and mind Acts 4: 32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 

Think… What can I do?

Job 2: 11-13 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathise with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognise him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

Luke 4 v1: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert… v14: Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit… v18: Jesus read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”

We must be open to the Spirit

Isaiah 58: You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

We must pour ourselves out Then God will make us like springs of water that never fail

God calls us all to be good news to the poor