Love in Action
According to World Vision, 698 million people live on less than $2.00 a day.
Just for context: You can barely buy a candy bar for $2.00 anymore—you couldn’t even buy a gallon of gas for $2.00 if you wanted to.
Children and youth account for 2/3rds of the world’s poor, and women are the primary representative in many regions. About 70% of people who are older than 15 and live in extreme poverty have no schooling or only some basic education.
According to Richard Stearns—president of World Vision from 1998 to 2018—if you have a parent who makes $50,000 or more per year, you’re in the top 1% of wealth in the entire world.
Think about that. The top 1%.
Reality has a way of altering our perspective.
John 3:16 has to be one of, if not the most, well-known verse in the Bible.
But there’s actually another John 3:16 that I think provides insight into the call of defending and aiding the less fortunate in our world. 1 John chapter 3, verse 16 says,
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth (1 John 3:16, NIV).
John’s essentially saying, “don’t just talk about it, be about it!”
“But Micah, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to help!”
Here’s our charge: Do SOMETHING, Help SOMEONE!
I’ll never forget the first time I went to a developing nation. My basketball team and I went to the Dominican Republic my sophomore year in college and by far, the person who was impacted the most on this trip was my friend Grant. Grant was our point guard and Grant went into the week and he decided that he was going to listen to the Holy Spirit and whoever the Holy Spirit called him to love, he was going to go all in on loving that individual.
Grant met someone on the first day that changed the course of his life. He met a young girl—the same age as many of you in this room—probably 14 or 15 years old. Our first day down there, this girl was sitting on a street corner with her arms and legs crossed into a ball with her head tucked in between. Even though she was on the busiest street of the beach, she looked like she didn’t want to be seen by anyone. For whatever reason, the Holy Spirit tapped Grant on the shoulder and said, “hey, that’s your person this week.”
And so, Grant was obedient, he wasn’t sure what to do but he decided, you know what? I’m going to do SOMETHING. I’m going to help SOMEONE. And so Grant, took out a $20 bill and he bent down and he handed it to this girl. Just $20. The girl’s face lights up and she disappears, and I thought we’d never see her again.
Fast forward 4 days and we’re back on the beach. The rest of our team is out having fun, but that girl finds Grant on the beach and approaches him. She hadn’t said a word the first day and she ended up never saying a word. As Grant interacted with her, Grant learned that she was deaf and mute. She could only communicate through sign language and a little bit of writing. And over the course of the next 8 hours, Grant—awkwardly, with difficulty—captured pieces of this girl’s story. He learned that she was sexually abused as a little girl, that she had been sold into sex slavery at age 10 and that 14/15 years old, she was on the run as she sought to make life happen on her own with a crippling disability. That’s how she had ended up on the street.
Grant, continued to love on her and play with her, he bought her lunch and then dinner that day and just continued to be present with her and eventually, they struck up a conversation on the napkin they were using about Jesus. Grant asked, “Jesus? Do you know?” She said no. And grant, with point-point precision began to share the Gospel with this sweet girl who ended up accepting Jesus into her heart that night. It was one of the most profound interactions I’ve ever witnessed and it marked our entire team and really, impacted Grant unlike any other interaction I’ve ever encountered.
But for me, it was this beautiful picture of the power of generosity. Here we were, thousands of miles from home and Grant was fulfilling his call to love his neighbor as himself. He sacrificed! He sacrificed money, he sacrificed time, he sacrificed fun, he sacrificed sleep to love on this girl the best he could.
Grant decided to Do SOMETHING and to Help SOMEONE.
See, here’s what’s so powerful about generosity, oftentimes, generosity is the front door us to deliver Good News. To help someone in need establishes credibility in a relationship to teach and preach about Jesus.
Who can you go all-in on loving? Who’s someone in your sphere that’s less fortunate and could use someone like you to simply say, “I see you, you have worth, and I care about you”?
Is there someone?
I know for me, that’s often the biggest hurdle. I’m not great at putting myself in the vicinity of people less-fortunate than me. You can blame 21st century culture or you can blame selfishness and fear, but it’s true all-the-same.
As Scot McKnight puts it bluntly, “Any that want to follow Jesus absolutely must have a heart for the wounded and the marginalized.”
It’s not an option.
To apprentice under Jesus is to put love in action.
Let’s be people who love others in a way that costs us. It’s how Jesus first loved us.
Be encouraged.
