Loving the PoorUzorak

Spiritually Poor 

You may have a desire to love the poor, but you may not know where to begin. Safety and wisdom are the first action point, but I will share with you some other ideas.

Volunteering is a great way to begin to help the poor. Volunteer some of your time to serving the community. There are many organizations that reach out to the poor and could use your help. A woman at our church knits little booties by the dozen. She donates them to a pregnancy center and pregnant women can take them for free when getting a sonogram. Volunteering is about using your giftedness and expertise to help others. It is about sharing your resources and knowledge with those who need it. Sometimes it is simply about sharing your time to bless somebody. We are all busy, but we can make time to go feed the hungry, love on orphans, tutor children who cannot afford tutors, or hang out with the youth at the YMCA. There is so much you can do for your community. 

I encourage you to not only volunteer but to take people to a faith center. A faith center can be an organization or location that ministers in some form but is faith-based. Faith centers not only provide food for the hungry and clothes and shelter for the homeless, but they also share Jesus Christ with them. People there will have the opportunity to know Jesus as their Savior. They will have the opportunity to listen to the good news and choose to trust in Christ. 

The goal of the Bible is not to make Earth a better place to go to hell from. The goal of the Bible is that people can trust Jesus Christ as their Savior for all of eternity. Ministering to the poor is an on-ramp to sharing the gospel because here’s the truth — do you know this? Every human being is spiritually poor. Until we trust Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are spiritually poor. The Apostle Paul wrote that Jesus became poor on our behalf. He who was rich became poor so that we who are poor spiritually can become rich spiritually. When you trust Jesus as your Savior when you receive Christ, you have a relationship with God and this gives you spiritual wealth. It might not change your wallet, but it changes your eternity.