The poor. We find them all around us. They are a part of the very fabric of our society. We have seen the tent encampments along the creeks and rivers in our towns. We have observed the grocery carts full of personal belongings. Daily, we are made aware of the needs of individuals that stand along the roads and streets of our city bearing signs that read, “Anything helps: need food.”
A study conducted in 2022 by the US Census Bureau revealed that in the United States alone that year, nearly 11.5 percent of the country lived in poverty. That equates to around 37.9 million people that live daily with the ever-present reality weighing heavily upon them, of being poor.
We could talk at length of the role of the church and as to how we are called to minister to those less fortunate. I believe that as Christians it is a part of our living out what we believe when we do so. But have you thought of the poor who seem to have everything in life?
There is a passage in the final book of the Bible in Revelation 3:17 that reads, “Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing…. but knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”
To get a better understanding of what the writer is saying we need to go back a few lines to verse 15. He writes (but the words are from God) “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.” What a frightening thing to those to whom this was addressed. God, the one to whom we call in distress, the one to whom we cry out to when in need, the one that we will one day stand before on that day of judgement, has held court, and found them to be guilty.
Like the layers of an onion, their life has been peeled back. The outside façade that they had so craftily designed and promoted to the world around them as what authenticity looks like, has been stripped away. Layer by layer the years of what they had built, and what they had convinced others to believe were removed in a moment of time. God said, “I know thy works. I know you inside and out. You are NOT what you masquerade as.”
The Message puts it in a graphic way when it says, “You’re stale. You’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need nothing from anyone,’ oblivious that in fact you’re a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.” He is saying, “you are the poorest of poor, yet you are blinded by self-deceit.”
Ouch! What a painful dialogue that cuts quickly to the core of things. While believing that their religion is above all others, they stand before the world and God, as wretched being blinded by vanity and spiritual pride. Blinded the scripture says to reality.
I’ve known people like that. Professing the highest level of Holiness and Godly living and knowing the doctrines of the church and the Bible perhaps like no other. Because of that, they have taken upon themselves the mantle of lawgiver and crusader to straighten everyone else in the world out, so that they can talk, look, and act, just like them. Everything looks like a nail when you are a hammer, and hammer they do. Destroying, hurting, leading others astray, wounding, and feeling justified with every word spoken and with every deed done. Blindly swinging the hammer at everything and everyone that doesn’t look, speak, or act like them.
Can I share a secret? While knowing and befriending the “hammers” over the years, I also heard the voices of the unsaved and the lost who knew them as well. They shared a very different perspective. They shared that if serving God was what their lives reflected then they would prefer to not have a relationship with Christ. They shared that if holy living was what they portrayed, some even suggested, “we would rather go to a different church” and that if this was what it meant to be a Christian, they would rather not be one.
How tragic. People will die and be in hell while we blindly profess something that we do not possess. We claim to be the richest of the rich while being the poorest of the poor. Poor? That’s what the other people are.
Can we just stop and solicit His help?
“Lord, help me today once again. Help me to see who I really am in your sight, for after all, that is what truly matters. Peel back the layers that I have built and grown in my Pharisaical life. Those layers of judgmental spirit, bitterness, envy, and that bent towards being unteachable. Help me to be humble, knowing that all that I am and all that I will ever be is because of you and you alone. May others see you through me, and may I not offer them yet one more excuse to resist the drawing and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Open my eyes and allow me to see you, and then open my heart so that I may love others as you love them. Make me an instrument of grace that leads the lost to safety and that draws them to you.”
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