Last night, I attended the “Half the Sky Live” nationwide event with several people from New Hope. To be honest, after reading the book, Half the Sky, the event left me a little disappointed. Nonetheless, the various speakers at the event kept beating two drums over and over: 1) The importance of educating girls, in particular, and entire rural villages in the developing world; and 2) The amazing impact on societies when women are empowered economically.

     I want to write briefly about the second point and share a very cool web site that I learned about from the book (Half the Sky). From reading this book I learned that often in the poorest families in the world, men manage the money. These very poor men are inclined to spend a high percentage of their income on such things as alcohol, prostitutes, tobacco, and sugary products. Meanwhile, their children routinely die from preventable diseases and quite often miss out on an education, which is the surest rise out of dire poverty. In the book, the authors paint a picture of a mother who is grieving the death of her child from malaria for want of a $5 mosquito net while her husband is at the bar where he spends $5 per week on drink! A very sad picture indeed.

     As well as being a very “justice-oriented” person, I am also action-oriented. So, when I learn things like this (about how women in the developing world will invest in education while men invest in beer) I wonder what it is that I should do. Through this book I discovered a very cool web site: Kiva.org (http://www.kiva.org/). At Kiva, you can make loans to people around the world—both men and women. You can start by lending as little as $25 to entrepreneurs in developing areas of the world. On this site, you can learn about the specific person or group of people that you will be lending to, you can learn about their business plans (how they will invest the money you loan), you can see what organization is actually disbursing the money and what the odds are that it will be repaid. Right now I have made one $25 loan to the Kayembe Women’s Group in Uganda (pictured). 48 other people are joined with me, and together we have loaned them $1,900 to start a food market. They are to repay this loan over the course of six months beginning on May 1. If all goes well, they will get a boost up and be able to start a profitable business, which will help them and their families rise out of poverty, and (almost incredibly to me) I will get my $25 put back into my Kiva portfolio. Then I can either re-invest it in another loan, or I can even collect it back.

     Technology has made our world so much smaller. It has opened many doors such as this one. Through Kiva.org, you can join together with people around the world to pool your funds to make micro loans, which will help people to develop themselves. In short, it’s a hand up, not a hand out. And I’m all about that. So, check out the web site, and consider making a loan. It’s one easy way that we can become involved in addressing some of the world’s biggest problems. 

     A dry breeze was blowing as we approached the gate of an unmarked compound with a high white wall surrounding it. We were just about one mile south of the equator and a little bit outside the city. Off to the left was a tall mountain towering over us. There were six of us visiting this home for underage girls rescued from prostitution in Ecuador. We banged and banged on the gate, but no one answered. After going around to the side of the compound we got the attention of the guard who then came to meet us at the front gate. He inquired about who we were and what we were there for. Then he shut the gate to check on whether we should be allowed in. After a few minutes he came back and let us in, leading us to a building toward the back of the walled compound. Evidently the compound is unmarked and not easy to access for the protection of the young girls who live there.

     The 19 girls who live there range in age from 12 to 17. The average age is between 13-15. They are former prostitutes who have been rescued sometimes by the police, sometimes by their families, and sometimes by the girl herself seeking out help. I learned a lot about sexual slavery in Ecuador from the house’s director. It turns out that it is somewhat different from anything I had read about elsewhere. The typical pattern is for a man in his twenties or even thirties to show interest in a young girl. He gets her to fall in love with him and then through guilt, threats, or other manipulative measures gets the girl to sell herself to other men. At times, these men will be wooing several girls at once—making them feel special and drawing them into a monstrous trap.

     I learned that one of the biggest challenges at this rehabilitation center is that the girls do not see themselves as victims who have been exploited. Most often they come in against their wills because they genuinely believe that they love and are loved. Through the counseling they receive there, they come to discover what has been done to them and how they have been used so that they can rise out of their circumstances.

     Three of the girls have children with them there. One of the staff said that others are pregnant now. Four new girls just arrived today some time before we did. It blows my mind to think that yesterday they were enslaved, and today they have an opportunity to be free.

     As the girls gathered around—sitting on some steps on a patio outside—I was able to share with them that they mattered to God and to the people at New Hope Community. I gave them the letters the church sent to them and the bracelets the youth group made for them. I also passed around photos of the youth group making the bracelets and writing the cards. I was not allowed to take any pictures of them to protect their security and privacy. One of the most moving moments of the time there was when the girls spontaneously started singing a song in Spanish that Juan Miguel from Casa G had taught them a couple months ago. In Spanish it is called “Me Amaste a Mi.” Here is my translation:

You saw me when no one else saw me

You loved me when no one else loved me

And you gave me a name

I am your child

The apple of your eye

Because you loved me.

     As they sang these words, I had to look away and fight back tears. How powerful these words seemed when they were sung by some who know so deeply what it is like not to be seen, not to be loved, and not to be valued as a person with a name and an identity. Truly the love of God is an amazing thing. It breaks my heart though that there is so little promise for the future for these girls. I held a little baby, Ashley, who is five months old. She is a beautiful child. Her mother is only 17. She is from Colombia and has no family here in Ecuador. She has no connection with her parents in Colombia, and when she turns 18 she will have to leave this home. What will become of her? And what about this precious little baby? As I reflected on the day, I felt a lot of different things. But one of the strongest feelings I have is that I am like the negative example James gives in James 2:15-16: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” (NIV). I went in and told them that they matter to God and to his people, but what are we going to do about Ashley and her mom? What are we going to do about Josefina (not her real name) who is 14 and is ready to leave the program but can’t go home because her former pimp is still around and threatening her mom? We have to do more than say, “God loves you. Keep warm and be well fed.”

     For now, we must pray for them and wait on the Lord to show us what to do. The Lord has been teaching me that I need to wait on him and not always push ahead, but eventually I believe he will lead us to do something tangible and practical because to do nothing would be a tragedy. So I pray the Lord shows us what to do and how to truly show his love to these girls with action as well as words.

     I have been thinking about the purpose oflife lately. If I were at the end of my life, what would I like to haveaccomplished? This is the question I have asked myself. My conclusion is that Iwant to use my life helping others grow in their faith and developing the giftsGod has given them. I must give my life away in order for it to truly count. Todo this, I want to be someone who equips others for the work of the ministry. Ithink this is biblical, but I would like to dialog with you about it, so pleasepost a comment to interact on this.

     We are, of course, commanded to love Godand to love others, and Jesus says that all the law and the prophets hang onthese two commands of love. We are also instructed to make disciples and topreach the good news of the kingdom of God. So behind everything we do must belove for God and love for people. Love puts the interests of the other personahead of my own. I can put aside my own selfish ambition to cheer others on asan act of love.

     I think that there is a common “shadowmission” that we pursue without even realizing that it’s not really love. Ithink that many people—even many good Christian people (even me!)—waste so muchof their lives in service without love. They give of what they have (theirtime, talent, and treasure), but they don’t give themselves. My purpose in lifeis to give my life away—to put God and others first not just by serving thembut by truly loving them. I want to weave together two passages of Scripture tomake the point about how very important it is that we serve only and always inlove. First, James 2:14-17 and then 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 are the Scriptures Ihave in mind. Both of these are familiar passages, but I hope you’ll read themcarefully:

What good is it, mybrothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can suchfaith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,"but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way,faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead (James 2:14-17TNIV).

If I speak in humanor angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or aclanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteriesand all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not havelove, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body[to hardship] that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (1Corinthians 13:1-3 TNIV).

     Hereis what I am trying to say. First, James tells us that if we have true faith—savingfaith that makes us right with God—we will take action. James specifically saysthat we will care for the poor as an evidence of genuine faith. I’m pretty goodat taking action. In fact, I consider myself to be an “action-oriented” person.Serving is easy, but that’s not enough. Life is about more than serving God andothers because when I look at 1 Corinthians 13, I see that Paul is saying thatit doesn’t matter much what I do if I don’t do it with love as the motivation.So, the conclusion is that faith doesn’t mean anything unless I do something, butdoing something doesn’t mean anything unless I do it with love. The bottom linethen is that what I believe must result in action that is motivated by truelove—love for God and love for our neighbors.

     This week I am preaching about Abraham. Preparing for this message has been a lot more uplifting than last week’s sermon about sin entering the world and its effects. Abraham is, of course, known for his great faith. Genesis 15:6 is a very famous verse that says: “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (TNIV). When I think of Abraham, I think of an old guy who believed God a lot. One key thing that I learned about Abraham’s faith in my studies this week is that faith which pleases God has both an active and a passive element. The activity and the waiting are like two sides of the “faith coin.”     

     If you remember Abraham’s story, you recall that God makes some pretty amazing promises to him. He promises to give his descendants the land of Canaan, and he promises to make Abraham’s descendants into a great and numerous people. God also asks Abraham to leave his home, his father’s household and his people and to go to the land that God would show him. God asks a lot of Abraham, and he promises him a lot as well.

     Abraham obeyed God and exercised faith by getting up and actually moving to the land God was planning to give him. In other words, Abraham’s faith was action-oriented. It would have been silly for him to think he would receive the land God promised while he stayed in Haran or Ur waiting for a miracle. So, he got up and he got moving. However, his faith in God’s promise for land was also passive. When Abraham arrived in the land God was going to give him, other people already lived there. Abraham had a few options at this point. The Bible tells us that Abraham was wealthy, so we might assume that he could have started to buy up land. Buying the land would seem a valid option. He also had several hundred people in his household, and he could have started trying to take the land by force. This was pretty much an accepted practice in his time, and he could have tried to do this—but he didn’t. Instead Abraham chose a third option. He believed God enough to wait. His faith was active when action was called for (He moved hundreds of miles to an unknown land!), and it was patient when what was needed was simply to wait on God.

     We see the same thing with Abraham’s believing God about the promise of a son through his wife, Sarah. Abraham and Sarah were very old (100 and 90!) when their son, Isaac, was born. (If this happened today, they’d probably be the only couple in the check out lane buying diapers for their kid and Depends for themselves!) Nonetheless, God never promised a miraculous conception, and so Abraham and Sarah’s active faith led them to keep trying to conceive knowing all the while that they had no choice but to wait on the Lord to provide the promised son.

     This lesson of faith being both passive and active is especially difficult for me. I am a strongly action-oriented person. I have trouble sitting still for five minutes to wait for anything. For me, faith has always been about action, but this week—through the example of Abraham—I have seen that sometimes moving forward is a demonstration of faith, but other times waiting with hope is the correct expression of faith. May God help me to know when to act and when to wait, and may he grow my faith through both the action and the waiting.

     We just began a new teaching series at New Hope Community. It is called “The Story of Us.” Last week was the first Sunday, and we were talking about “Chapter 1: Creation.” Creation was a fun topic. We looked at the enormity of this universe that God made. We glanced at the intricacy of the universe—the fact that God paid attention to the smallest detail in what he made. And we looked that the role of humanity in God’s creation as his vice-rulers and co-creators. Good stuff! 

     This week I have been preparing for the second message, which is on “Crisis.” (It's amazing how quickly humanity moved from "Creation" to "Crisis," isn't it?) This message is all about sin entering the world and its effects. The result of preparing for this message is that I have been thinking more about sin this week than I might during a typical week. As I have considered God’s good creation and then the sin in the world, it has amazed me how very pervasive the effects of sin are. Truly Adam and Eve’s disobedience has affected the whole created order.

     I think sin affects us on at least three levels. First, there are the intra-personal effects of sin. Part of the curse in Genesis 3 was that we would return to the dust from which we were formed ("dust to dust"). In other words, after we fully mature, our bodies become weaker and weaker until we die, and we are always vulnerable to disease, injury, and death. Indeed, I have been reminded this week just how very fragile our physical lives are. Disease, sickness, death, and decay are all results of sin that affect us very personally.

     Another dimension of sin’s effects is inter-personal. It comes as no surprise that sin affects the way we relate to other people. This was also part of the curse in Genesis 3. When the Lord God said that the woman’s desire would be for her husband and that he would rule over her, he was saying that their relationship would change dramatically for the worse because of their sin. I have been very burdened lately reading and hearing about slavery around the world. Yesterday, I spoke on the phone with a gentleman in Uganda named David Kamanzi. He and his wife, Esther, have been ministering to six young girls (ages 12-15) who are in forced prostitution. (Accompanying this post is a photo of some of these girls along with their children (Yes, they have children…and AIDS, too.). I am putting this photo here because it makes them real people to me.) How is it that one human being can commit a crime so monstruous against another human being? But then I wonder how it is that I can stand by and do so little to stop atrocities like this between people. The effects of sin between one person and another can hardly be overstated.

     Finally, sin affects the natural order, and there are droughts and earthquakes and other “natural disasters.” These things were not a part of God’s perfect creation. In the beginning, people took care of the world, and the world took care of them. No longer is this true. Now people disregard the world and the world is a very dangerous place. I was reminded of this again this week as I heard at a meeting on Tuesday just how very dire the situation in Haiti is. A gentleman at the meeting I was at spoke about how he was supposed to go to Haiti on the 20^th of this month, but his trip was canceled because of how bad things are there. No doubt you’ve seen scores of photos of the devastation, and this, too, was caused by sin’s effects on the creation.

     As I have reflected on sin, I have become deeply sad…and mad! Some aspects of sin’s effects just make me ANGRY. Why should people suffer as these girls in Uganda suffer at the hands of another human being? Other aspects make me sad, like when I hear about someone with a serious illness. Then it hit me. I think that God feels the same way about sin. I think it makes him very sad and also very mad (more sad and more mad than it makes me for sure). We’re like rebel teenagers shaking our fists at a loving God who wants so badly to bless us and to have us return home to him through his Son, Jesus. And this thought about God makes me realize that there is no such thing as a small sin—“little” white lies make God sad and mad, too. And even my “little” sins contribute to making this world such a mess.

     I am reading a book by Francis Chan calledCrazy Love. Francis is talking abouthow the life of a Christ-follower should be marked by a passionate love forJesus, not simply  following therules and saying and believing the right things. One line that I read todayalmost leaped off the page. Francis writes that “something is wrong when ourlives make sense to unbelievers.”

     Something is wrong when my life makessense to the people of this world. If that’s true then I think something iswrong with my life because so much of it (maybe even all of it) makes perfectsense to my unbelieving neighbors. I live with my healthy, beautiful family ina three-bedroom home in a suburban community with plenty of food in thecabinets, two cars in the driveway, a dog, a fenced-in yard, clean drinkingwater, and so much more. When it’s cold outside, I turn on the heat. When it’shot outside, I turn on the air conditioner. Thanks to my friend, Larry Pahl, Ieven have a waterfall in my backyard! In short, I have a pretty comfortablelife. Nothing particularly wrong with that in and of itself, but it does makeme wonder what about my life doesn’t make sense to unbelievers. What radicalthing am I doing with my life—what mountain am I climbing—that makes them lookat me and say, “Huh?”? Consider Noah. He definitely got this kind of reactionwhen he started building a big boat in his backyard and telling people theyneeded to repent because it was going to rain…a lot! His neighbors were nodoubt like, “Huh? We don’t get this guy!” How about Abraham? I’m sure his neighbors thought it was just marvelous that he was about to offer his son onan altar. In fact, as Francis points out, the lives of so many heroes of thefaith simply do not make sense to the world. Die for Jesus? That just doesn’tmake sense. Give everything away. That definitely doesn’t make sense. Cry overinjustice and stand up for people who cannot repay you? Why would you do that?

     Is there a passion in me that burns sowhite hot with love for the Lord that I do crazy things—nonsensical things? Iwant there to be. I want to love God so much that my non-believing neighborsthink, “Matt has lost it!” I wonder what ark I am supposed to be building thatwill make my neighbors think I’m nuts. The trouble is that I want to be aradical follower of Jesus, but at the same time I want to be comfortable. MayGod help me to love him more so that my life no longer makes sense to thosearound me—that it may be poured out for God as the woman poured expensiveperfume on the feet of Jesus. 

     On January 1, I started a new Bible reading plan. Actually, it’s an old plan that I have done several times, but I had stopped doing it last year. In any case, I have been reading in Genesis about Abraham. It’s cool how you can read God’s Word many times and continue to see new things in it. It is a rich treasure trove for us as Christ-followers.

     What I have been thinking about is how God called Abram, changed his name to Abraham, and blessed him abundantly. He gave him (for the most part) peace with his neighbors, a beautiful and loving wife, two sons (including Isaac, the child of promise), and great wealth.  And all this doesn’t even take into account that Abraham had an amazing relationship with God who came to visit him in the form of a human being to personally speak with him. Abraham was blessed—very blessed, in fact.

     But God didn’t bless Abraham just for Abraham’s own sake. He blessed him so that he could be a blessing to the world. Check out these words from Genesis 22 (God speaking to Abraham): “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me" (17-18 TNIV).

     God is promising Abraham that all nations on earth will be blessed through Abraham’s offspring. Since I was a kid, I was told that this referred to Jesus. Being a Jew, Jesus was Abraham’s descendent, and clearly Jesus died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2). Obviously, the world was blessed beyond all measure by the coming of Jesus to forgive us our sins, to make us right with God, and to give us spiritual life. I do not want to diminish the importance of this in any way, but what I have been thinking about is simply the idea that we, like Abraham, are very blessed, and so we must be a blessing to the world.

     If you know Jesus as your Savior, you have spiritual riches beyond belief. So many of you reading this (and me for sure!) are blessed with wonderful families and fulfilling jobs. In our nation, we have abundant financial blessings (Even when we feel poor, we have so much more than the rest of the world!). Why would God give us all these blessings? Clearly, he loves us outrageously. When I look at my own self, I don’t know why such an awesome, holy God would love me, but he does. But I think that, like Abraham, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to all nations. We are blessed so that we can bless the world.

     So, I am asking myself this question: Since I have been so blessed, how can I be a blessing to the world? First, I can point all people to Jesus who is the source of all true blessing, but then I can fight injustice and oppression. I can lead toward freedom and wholeness. I can give generously until it actually costs me something (i.e., it changes my lifestyle). I can choose to personally know people who are orphans and widows, people who used to live on the street, or be held as slaves. I can pray with Jesus “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What is God’s will? He wills that none should perish but all come to life—real life—through Jesus. So, I can lift Jesus high and share his love and Word with everyone I can. He wills that people be free, so I can fight injustice, slavery, and oppression wherever I see it in the world. He wills that starving children with no clean water be cared for, loved, fed, and given clean water. He wills that we overcome evil with good, hatred with love, and greed with great sacrifice.

     Like Abraham, we as the Church are called to be a holy nation. We are set apart by God to both be blessed and to be a blessing. Would you join me in asking God how we might become more of a blessing to a hurting, pain-filled world? I’m tired of the status quo, and I want to believe that God can use his Church to truly bless this world and to see Jesus’ prayer for God’s kingdom to come to be answered.