Rich or Poor?

Ready to get motivated into action? Let's do it together.

i right this blog to express what i believe & to discuss what i think about. But that's not all. My hope is that this will be a call to action for me & other believers in Jesus. i have come to a point in my life where i am taking a closer look at what Jesus said & did while he was on earth. i decided that my lukewarm life just wasn't getting it. If i really am a disciple of Christ, shouldn't i be spending time with him & taking what he said seriously? Sure, i've been going to church, talking the talk & believing the right things, but i've been lazy about the things of God.

My family is involved in an outreach ministry. We occasionally have outreach activities that we do in the neighborhoods that we are involved with & we have strong beliefs & feelings for the hurting, the poor & the ones who don't know Jesus. But we really don't look any different than any other american family striving to live the american dream. You know, gotta have my steak cooked to perfection, gotta wear the nicest clothes, gotta drive a cool vehicle, etc. My style is at stake here, right? Well, i'll just tell you, i know better. Jesus changed my life many years ago, but i forgot what my relationship with Him meant. Things got in the way. i got busy. You know what i mean, right?

Well, i've fallen on my face before God & confessed my lukewarmness. Guess what - God still loves me. That was really good news.

Please take time to read below what David Platt says in his book "Radical".

Excerpt from the book "Radical" by David Platt

THE RICH MAN

So is caring for the poor a serious matter to God?
Listen to the story Jesus told one day to a group of religious leaders who loved money and justified their indulgences because of the culture around them. He told them about a rich man who lived in luxury while he ignored a poor man, Lazarus, who sat outside his gate, covered with sores and surrounded by dogs, eating the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. As we read in Luke 16, the day came when both men died. The rich man went to hell, and the poor man went to heaven. The rich man could see into heaven, and he cried out for relief from the agony of hell. The reply from heaven came. “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”

This story illustrates God’s response to the needs of the poor. The poor man’s name, Lazarus, literally means “God is my help.” Sick, crippled, and impoverished, Lazarus received compassion from God. Of course, just because someone is poor does not make him righteous before God and therefore fit for heaven. At the same time, though, a quick perusal through Scripture shows that God hears, feeds, satisfies, rescues, defends, raises up, and secures justice for the poor who trust in him. But this story also illustrates God’s response to those who neglect the poor. He responds to them with condemnation. Again, the Bible does not teach that wealth alone implies unrighteousness or warrants condemnation. The rich man in this story is not in hell because he had money. Instead, he is in hell because he lacked faith in God, leading him to indulge in luxuries while ignoring the poor outside his gate. As a result, earth was his heaven, and eternity became his hell.
Now I have to ask the question. When you hear this story from Jesus’ mouth, with whom do you identify more—Lazarus or the rich man? For that matter, with whom do I identify more?
In uncovering this blind spot in my life, God has made it clear that I look a lot like the rich man in this story. I don’t always think of myself as rich, and I’m guessing you may not think of yourself as rich either. But the reality is, if you and I have running water, shelter over our heads, clothes to wear, food to eat, and some means of transportation (even if it’s public transportation), then we are in the top 15 percent of the world’s people for wealth.
I am much like the rich man, and the church I lead looks a lot like him too. Every Sunday we gather in a multimillion-dollar building with millions of dollars in vehicles parked outside. We leave worship to spend thousands of dollars on lunch before returning to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of homes. We live in luxury.
Meanwhile, the poor man is outside our gate. And he is hungry. In the time we gather for worship on a Sunday morning, almost a thousand children elsewhere die because they have no food. If it were our kids starving, they would all be gone by the time we said our closing prayer. We certainly wouldn’t ignore our kids while we sang songs and entertained ourselves, but we are content with ignoring other parents’ kids. Many of them are our spiritual brothers and sisters in developing nations. They are suffering from malnutrition, deformed bodies and brains, and preventable diseases. At most, we are throwing our scraps to them while we indulge in our pleasures here.
This is not what the people of God do. Regardless of what we say or sing or study on Sunday morning, rich people who neglect the poor are not the people of God.

Please think about this. If we believe in God & call ourselves christian, then we've got to take what Jesus said seriously. Don't we? i mean we have put our faith in him as the son of God. We believe that he suffered & died for us. We are known to the world as disciples of Jesus Christ. Why are we not all helping to feed the poor?

This is just one thing that Jesus said. There are many more. i am simply speaking the truth in love. Let's get to work. Jesus has called us to a dangerous & exciting life.

Please let me know what you think in the comments area. Also, please forward a link to this blog to all your church friends. 

By the way, Jesus never said anything about his children following after anything that remotely resembles the american dream.