by Joyce Meyer
Is there any real purpose in being alive if all we are going to do is get up every day and live only for ourselves? I have tried that and found that it left me empty and unfulfilled. I don’t think that is what God has in mind for us at all as His representatives here on earth.
I stopped writing this manuscript for a little while to re-read all the Scriptures I could find on loving others. Now I am even more convinced than ever that this is the real purpose in living. I urge you to dedicate your entire being to doing good. Offer God your hands, arms, mouth, feet, eyes, and ears and ask Him to use them to make someone else’s life better. Use your arms to reach out with a hand of hope to someone who is hungry, in pain, or lonely.
The Harvest of Love
Giving and living selflessly do produce a harvest in our lives. There is nothing wrong with desiring and expecting a harvest. Our motivation for helping others should not be to get something for ourselves, but God does tell us we will reap what we sow and we can look forward to that benefit. One Scripture that expresses this truth so beautifully is found in the book of Luke 6:38: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again” (KJV).
God promises to reward those who diligently seek Him (see Heb. 11:6). The word reward in the original Greek text of the New Testament means, “wages received in this life” or “recompense.” In the Hebrew language, in which the Old Testament is written, the word reward means, “fruit, earnings, product, price, or result.” The word reward is used 68 times in the Amplified version of the Bible. God wants us to look forward to rewards of our obedience and good choices.
If we care about those who are poor and oppressed, God promises that we will not want, but that if we hide our eyes from their need we shall have “many a curse” in our lives (Prov. 28:27). The writer of Proverbs even says that when we give to the poor we are lending to God (see Prov. 19:17). I cannot imagine that God does not pay great interest on what is loaned to Him.
I urge you to work to bring justice to the oppressed. That simply means that when you see something that you know is not right, you work to make it right.
Living in the Light
We all probably want more light in our lives. That would mean more clarity, better understanding, and less confusion. The prophet Isaiah declared that if we would divide our bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into our homes, cover the naked and stop hiding ourselves from the needs around us, our light would break forth (see Isa. 58:7–8). He also said that our healing and restoration and the power of a new life would spring quickly. That sounds good to me and I am sure it does to do you also.
Isaiah wrote of justice and said it would go before us and conduct us to peace and prosperity and that the glory of the Lord would be our rear guard. If we are actively helping the oppressed, God goes before us and He also has our back! I like that feeling of safety and certainty.
Isaiah further said that if we would pour out that with which we sustain our own lives for the hungry and satisfy the need of the afflicted that our light would rise in darkness and any gloom we experienced would be comparable to the sun at noon (see Isa. 58:10). The sun is very bright at noon, so it sounds to me like helping people is the way to live in the light.
The Lord will guide us continually and even in dry times He will satisfy us. He will make our bones strong and our lives will be like a watered garden (see Isa. 58:11). All of this happens as a result of living to bring justice to the oppressed.
I hope you are seeing what I am seeing through these promises. I think most of us waste a lot of our lives trying to get what God will gladly give if we simply do what He is asking us to do. Care about the poor, the hungry, the destitute, orphans, widows, the oppressed and needy. Live your life to help others, and God will satisfy you in every way possible.
LOVE REVOLUTIONARY
Martin Smith
What Does Our Love Revolve Around?
I remember it all so clearly. It was January 10, 2008. The side street—all potholes and no sidewalks—was just big enough for our bus to squeeze through. We stepped out into heat and chaos and the smell of a thousand used tires dumped on a fire already blended with cheap fuel and last month’s trash. Stalls and workshops and shacks and homes. Saris and sandals and bare feet and a noise that blurred the senses.
But all this was as nothing compared to what came next…
This was Mumbai, India. We were in a slum, or, to be precise, we were in a red-light district of one of the city’s many slums. There were no red lights to see, and everybody there seemed to be occupied in some way—making, selling, sweeping, carrying.
We were here to see Prem Kiran—a project devoted to working with children of prostitutes and their families. Dave and Joyce had invited us. They told us it was a project we really ought to see for ourselves.
I don’t know that I’d ever encountered quite so much life in one single room. It was as if the walls were unable to hold it all. Seventy smiling faces, all turned toward the visitors like sunflowers toward the evening sun. Outside, I could see the street and the slum and the alleys down which so much pain and struggle and death lurked. But being inside this room was an experience more potent than any I had ever tasted.
There was one child in particular whom I felt unable to leave. Farin (pronounced fa-reen) was her name and there was something about her that told me I’d have trouble walking away from her.
I found out more over the next hour. Like most of the others, Farin’s mother was a prostitute. Prem Kiran had stepped in and helped to make her life so much better—offering food, clothing, education, and the support of loving, devoted, sacrificial Christians. Yet my mind was plagued by questions.
How many times had Farin had to hide beneath the bed while her mother worked?
How much danger had she been exposed to in the slum’s streets after dark?
How could her life hope to be much different if she didn’t get out now?
How could I walk away?
How could I?
That one afternoon in Mumbai changed everything.
The next evening we were playing a concert in the city. What else could we do but get the children and their mothers to come join us on stage? So they came, and it was great to have them up there with us—all shy smiles and adrenaline jumps and culture shock. And then something bigger happened. We played, and the mothers simply started to dance. The mothers of the night, the sex workers who were dressed in red lipstick and faded saris, danced with freedom and grace and love in front of a crowd of thousands. Spinning like falling feathers, hands that told stories and feet that trod with care; their dance captured something I’d never seen before.
And that’s when it struck me: Where should justice be? Where should the outcasts be welcome? Where should those whose lives are weighed down by poverty find freedom and hope? Where should our love get spent without question?
I’d been brought up in church, but somewhere along the way I’d missed some lessons. I’d not learned that when it comes to our response to poverty and injustice—and the role of us Christians as worshippers—God doesn’t want things neatly divided. Years back I would have run a mile from the suggestion that we should have a group of women who were forced into prostitution dancing on stage while we worshipped. Now it seems like a sign of the times. It seems that God is stirring the church up like never before and letting us know that it is just these types of people who need to be welcome.
So when it comes to dealing with the idea of how we are in need of a Love Revolution, I’m left with one question: What does our love revolve around?
I got home from the trip to Mumbai and everything was a mess. My head had stopped working the way it used to, and I was deeply troubled. I felt a burden on me when it came to Farin—that if we didn’t do something ourselves her life would head toward a future made short by suffering, poverty, ab
use, and disease. I felt as though she had become another daughter and our family was incomplete without her.
It turns out that God’s plans were different from mine.
A year and a few months later, as I write about this experience, things are not quite the way I had assumed they would be. Farin has not left the city. She’s still with her family, but her mother no longer works as a prostitute. They’re about to move a few hours out of Mumbai, to live in a community for people just like them—ex-sex workers wanting to find new life away from the chaos and danger of the past. Farin’s life is looking fuller than I could have hoped.
And mine?
In a way, I was kind of right about becoming a father again. But not to Farin. Sometime this year my wife, Anna, and I gave birth to another child—a charity, called CompassionArt.
CompassionArt exists to raise money through arts-related projects (like albums and books) that use sales and royalties to fight poverty in all its forms, the extreme sort that robs people of life and the sort that might be harder to spot but robs people of hope. We both remember talking to Joyce and Dave about it at its conception, which I guess makes them CompassionArt’s grandparents or something like that. It was their passion and wisdom that helped us take those early steps.
But more than that, CompassionArt is about reworking the formula. It’s about challenging the math that suggests that when we cease to care for others our faith remains on course. It doesn’t. The truth, of course, is that it all just gets weaker. When our passion and purpose and love revolve around our own agenda, we have simply got it wrong.
When our love reaches out beyond us we find ourselves aligned more closely with God’s right way up.
Lately whenever I’ve found myself with a microphone, a stage, and a crowd, wondering what’s coming next, I’ve felt a need to read from Isaiah 58. Somehow I’ve been unable to resist the simplicity and strength of the words, and even though they were hand delivered to the Israelites a little less than three thousand years ago, they deal with eternal issues that are just as relevant today.
I get caught up in the passion of the opening lines: “Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet” (Isa. 58:1 NIV).
What follows deserves to be screamed, not whispered or filed away for a later date. This is a real-time issue that must capture the attention of everyone, everywhere: “Day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them” (v. 2 NIV, emphasis mine). It’s those words seem and as if that are the problem. Their heart’s clearly not right and they’re heading for a fall.
God answers their question about why He seems to have ignored all their premium quality religious acts: “On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers… You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high” (vv. 3–4 NIV).
Then come the lessons once again, the recapping so that even those of us who have been dozing at the back finally get it: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice… to set the oppressed free… to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (vv. 6–8 NIV). It really doesn’t get much clearer, does it? The persecuted, the abused, the hungry, the homeless, the poor—these are the people around whom our love must revolve, not ourselves or our failed ideas of being impressively religious.
God is clear about the result of all this: “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear… Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I” (vv. 8–9 NIV).
For years we’ve searched for intimacy in our worship. We’ve sung songs that talk about God being close and our lives being His. We’ve pursued those moments when we know that God is close; we’ve chased after His voice and searched for His plans. And all along we’ve missed the key to true intimacy: “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed… The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (vv. 9–11 NIV).
And if we do, then more than the payoff of hearing God’s voice and carrying His love to those that need it most, more than that fantastic image of being like a well-watered garden soaked in life itself, Isaiah makes clear that God’s people start to take up their place in history: “Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings” (v. 12 NIV).
And there’s even more: “Then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob” (v. 14 NIV).
And all of this from stopping trying to impress God with our attempts at being “spiritual” and having good services that impress those around us. All of this from feeding someone who is hungry, from giving clothes to the poor, from defending the powerless, and speaking up for the weak. All of this—all of this history—gets made—from the simplest of acts. If only—if only we can learn to love more than ourselves.
There’s another truth behind all of this. The fact is, it can be hard to look out and try to make our love revolve around others. It’s easier when it’s all about us. Why? Partly because it’s always been this way—from stories of couples tasting forbidden fruit to kings on rooftops spying soon-to-be widows, and bad-tempered prophets heading to Spain because they couldn’t face the prospect of God’s extending mercy to anyone but His own people. This is the way it has always been with us, the continual struggle as we place ourselves on the throne instead of God and His Outrospective approach to life.
It seems as if it’s perhaps a little harder than ever these days. All around are forces pushing us to obey our thirst, to give in to our impulses because “we’re worth it,” to take hold of life and make it in our own image. We’re meant to want—and try to have—it all: the looks, the clothes, the income, the home, the relationships, the career. Everything designed to polish us up and make our lives so much better.
But we know the truth about life, don’t we? We know that in spite of the pressure to conform, a life revolved around us cannot lead us to true happiness.
I always liked it when we played a gig and we got to sing our song about being a historymaker. Over the years in the band, we’ve sung it hundreds of times, feeling that the lines had a sort of power to leave people feeling inspired, pumped, and primed to get on and live a remarkable life that would make history. But there is more; there has to be more.
If we’re going to be historymakers—and the future of millions of lives depends on there being more and more of us out there that are signing up to do so—then for most of us, it will be for a pretty specific set of reasons. We will make history by choosing to live our lives as a series of small acts of selfless living. As Mother Teresa said, “There are no great things; only small things with great love.” If we can get that into our DNA, the two billion Christians in the world could end world poverty in a matter of weeks. That’s the kind of history I want to see us making. Forget the inward focus; and just like those ancient words of Isaiah 58 promise, we will hear God more clearly and be in closer step with His power and His purpose if we stop making all this about ourselves and start to simply fix the problems and meet the needs that are around us. It’s as simple as that.
What I know for sure is this; big will always be powerful but small is extremely beautiful. This Love Revolution has the power to be massive, but it will only ever be made up of those small acts of selfless, sacrificial love. So our big stages
and big album sales and big songs—well, they’re okay at best, but they’re nothing as exciting as the power of a life lived against the flow.
One last point. How does the music fit into all this? The temptation to leave everything creative behind and go live in a cardboard box is strong. It feels as if this would be a way of finally doing something “real” with our lives. But this is never the whole story. A human’s well-being relates to the whole—body, soul, and spirit. I’ve seen firsthand the power of music, and I’m convinced that it is God’s secret weapon. Music can unite where there is war, it can soothe the pain of brokenness, it can break the hardest—and soothe the most broken—of hearts, from Rwandan genocide victims to New Yorkers who lost family in the twin towers, as well as those whose hatred ignited so much suffering.
Bring God into the equation—not that you can ever actually leave Him out, but you know what I mean, yes?—and you get a crowd beneath the Indian sky singing “God” songs, worshipping the Almighty with the angels. Open your eyes and you see healing come. Maybe it doesn’t immediately put food into the mouths of desperate children, but it’s a moment when heaven touches earth, and in that moment restoration happens. It is then that we feel a belonging, we feel that we are not alone. Incredibly, we feel that God Himself has not abandoned us.
Music can do this and God is not calling us to lay it aside and go live in a cardboard box. He is calling us to use our music, which is the gift He has placed in us to help the poor who live in desperate situations. If we adopt those lessons so clearly taught by the words in Isaiah, I’m convinced that in the coming days we will see great miracles before a note is even sung.