Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I miss the light and I get stopped turning on to 19th and I can tell it's cold outside because I can see his breath.
[00:00:10] He's got a cardboard sign and that sign says, anything helps, God bless.
[00:00:18] And all of a sudden my car feels like a fishbowl. It feels small and exposed.
[00:00:23] I feel like I don't know what to do with that. I should, I. Should I look or look away or.
[00:00:30] Man, I don't know what to do with that.
[00:00:32] And then the internal dialogue begins in my mind. And as I'm sitting there, I start asking a lot of questions like is this thing legitimate or is this just. He's going to take what he is given today and he's just going to go buy alcohol or drugs.
[00:00:51] Is this a situation that I should be involved in or not involved in?
[00:00:58] Why can't he just get a job like everybody else?
[00:01:02] And then I have that thought, why is this light so long?
[00:01:11] Finally it turns green and I'm able to go through the intersection and kind of escape what I was thinking about.
[00:01:19] And I honestly feel a pretty big sense of relief.
[00:01:23] But the other side of me is I, I feel a little unsettled.
[00:01:30] I don't know if you've been there. I think most of us have been in a situation like that where we are just at that place where we just don't know what to do with it. And we're kind of torn and frustrated. There's some guilt, but there's also some suspicion.
[00:01:47] There's just something there that just is frustrating about that. And the, and the hard part is like we've all been there and we're all going to be in that situation again.
[00:01:59] It's probably not even going to be that long.
[00:02:01] So I think we can all relate to that.
[00:02:04] And as we continue our conversation this morning on what does it mean to be an all in follower of Jesus, what we're going to talk about this morning is specifically how is it that we're going to deal with the vulnerable in our society? How, how are we going to deal with those people around us that just are constantly kind of in our vision, maybe our peripheral vision, but they're in our vision and we know that they're there.
[00:02:32] How do we have a heart that aligns with Jesus heart as it relates to, to the people in our society that are vulnerable?
[00:02:42] So to begin with, what I want to do is I want to go, I want to go back, like, like way back, like way, way back.
[00:02:50] I want to talk and start with Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet. He lived 700 years before Jesus was born. And one of the things that Isaiah is known most for is he wrote a lot of prophecy about what would the Messiah look like when the Messiah came to redeem the people of Israel.
[00:03:11] Now, when we think about Messiah, that's a Jewish word that gets translated into Greek and then into English, and it means Christ.
[00:03:21] In fact, Jesus's last name is not Christ, it's his title. It really should translate Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. But we're going to look at when the Messiah was prophesied in Isaiah, chapter 42.
[00:03:36] This is Isaiah writing, but he's writing what he hears God telling him. So this is God's voice through Isaiah.
[00:03:45] He writes, here is my servant. Servant is a term that Isaiah uses a lot to refer to the Messiah. Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.
[00:03:58] I will put my spirit on him. That little phrase, I will put my spirit on him. Mark that, because we're coming back to it.
[00:04:07] And he, the Messiah will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
[00:04:20] In faithfulness, he will bring forth justice.
[00:04:24] He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.
[00:04:30] Here's a little Bible tip for you.
[00:04:34] Back in the day, when they wrote that, they didn't have highlighters, they didn't bold text, they didn't underline things.
[00:04:42] The way they created emphasis, the way they said, pay attention is repetition. They went to something over and over and they kept saying it so that the reader knew, oh, this is really important. I need to pay attention right here.
[00:04:56] And so, as Isaiah writes about what the Messiah will be, notice what he says. He says that the Messiah will bring justice, that the Messiah will bring forth justice, that he will establish justice.
[00:05:09] Three times, in fact, Isaiah points to that just in these four short verses.
[00:05:14] He is saying that when the Messiah comes, Israel, here is what you can expect.
[00:05:20] He will bring justice to earth.
[00:05:26] Now, let's fast forward 700 years.
[00:05:29] Jesus comes on the scene 700 years later. And as he comes on the scene, he is the Messiah. How is he going to communicate that? How's he going to announce that his ministry begins with his baptism, where the Spirit comes upon him, and then he goes into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, and he's tempted by Satan.
[00:05:51] When he leaves the wilderness, the first thing he does according to Luke's Gospel, is he goes to a synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth.
[00:06:01] And he begins to teach in that synagogue. In it's quoted in Luke chapter four, Jesus speaking says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me. Remember that Isaiah said, what will happen when the Messiah comes, that the Spirit will be upon him. And Jesus says, first and foremost, the first thing I want you to know is the Spirit of the Lord is on me. I am the Messiah.
[00:06:28] He continues, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
[00:06:34] He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then he rolled up the scroll, he gave it back to the attendant, and he sat down.
[00:06:51] The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began saying to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
[00:07:03] He couldn't have said it louder or more pronounced. I am the Messiah. I am the one that was to come.
[00:07:11] I am here to redeem the people of Israel.
[00:07:15] So we know from Isaiah 42 that the Messiah was coming to bring justice.
[00:07:23] What does Jesus say justice looks like? As he comes as Messiah, he points to four things. He says he is going to proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim freedom to the prisoners, sight for the blind, and set the oppressed free.
[00:07:40] And as Jesus defines what it means to create justice in our world, he points to four groups of people. The blind, the oppressed, the imprisoned, and the poor.
[00:07:55] And he says, my kingdom is about justice.
[00:08:00] Justice for those that are less fortunate, those that are vulnerable.
[00:08:07] Some of them are vulnerable probably because of their own decisions.
[00:08:13] Like the prisoners, they are vulnerable for their own decisions. But yet Jesus says justice is about bringing protection for the vulnerable, Even if it's their decisions that led to that situation.
[00:08:28] Some of them are just in that situation. It just is what it is.
[00:08:32] But Jesus is very, very clear to us that what justice looks like in his world is that we protect those that are vulnerable.
[00:08:43] Now, he. He cites those four groups, right? Prisoners, poor, the blind, and the oppressed. But it's just. It's just like any list that any person would give, right? Like, he is sharing some that we can all relate to. We all understand they're vulnerable people in the population. But. But he's not limiting his expectation of what justice is to just that.
[00:09:08] He's expanding that. In fact, you see that throughout his teaching, just over and over, he continues to pull in other vulnerable groups to say, justice for the people that are all in followers of me is going to look like protecting these people and these people and these people, regardless of why they are vulnerable.
[00:09:31] So Jesus's mission of justice is to protect the vulnerable.
[00:09:35] And then that says to an all in follower of Jesus, what does that mean for me? How does that fit into my life?
[00:09:44] What does the vulnerable look like in my society in my day?
[00:09:50] Well, honestly, I've been thinking about a lot.
[00:09:53] The vulnerable in Jesus's day is pretty much the same as the vulnerable today. Like that list of things has not changed. Jesus points out the poor, he points out the imprisoned.
[00:10:04] We all know that he talks about orphans, we know he talks about widows. He stresses that the vulnerable include the immigrant, the disabled, the mentally ill.
[00:10:15] It's anyone who has been pushed to the margins of our culture and our society.
[00:10:22] We have a tendency to really want to focus on those that are kind of in the mainstream, especially people that are like us.
[00:10:29] It's not what Jesus did.
[00:10:31] Jesus was looking at those that were on the outskirts, those that were not in the mainstream, if you will.
[00:10:40] Now if that's true, if Jesus believed that justice for the vulnerable was a key aspect of his mission, as Isaiah prophesied, then wouldn't it make sense that as we looked at his teaching, we would see that theme just keep coming up and up and up and up.
[00:11:00] So what we're going to do is we're going to go through all four gospels and every single incident that that occurred and we're going to leave here at about midnight.
[00:11:08] Okay, I won't do that. How about, how about we just pick a couple that are super popular and everybody knows.
[00:11:14] Start with the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke chapter 10 if you want to find it. Luke, chapter 10. Now the parable of the Good Samaritan comes after a conversation that Jesus has.
[00:11:27] Jesus is having a conversation with a Pharisee, a religious leader, about what's the most important thing that a God fearing person would do. And he says, you would love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. Effectively. He's saying we need right relationships vertically and right relationships horizontally. That's what matters most. The Pharisee, being the scholar that he is, goes, I got the vertical thing, I'm good with that. Yep, I get it. Love God. But he wants to probe a little bit about the horizontal. He wants to understand like, well, what do you really mean about love my neighbor? And so he asked Jesus, what does it mean to love my neighbor? Who is my neighbor?
[00:12:07] And as Jesus answers That I felt like it would have been a lot more efficient if Jesus would have just said, the guy who lives next to you, that's your neighbor. Or the person who's sitting next to you right now, that's your neighbor.
[00:12:21] But Jesus never seems to just answer the question simply.
[00:12:26] So he takes the Pharisee on a journey through the parable of the Good Samaritan. And it goes like this. Most of you have a pretty good idea of the story, but it goes like this. There's a man. We don't know anything about the man. We assume he's Jewish, but we don't actually know. We don't know anything about this guy. All we know is he's going from Jerusalem to Jericho. Jericho is east of Jerusalem and it's about an eight hour walk. So it's not an insignificant distance to travel.
[00:12:52] Now it's interesting to point out that that walk would take you by Gethsemane, the, the, the Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. Like all the major things that happen Passion Week happen on this walk.
[00:13:08] And so the guy's walking along and some bandits come out of the woods and they attack him. They beat him up, they take his clothes and all his stuff and they leave him in a ditch ready to die. In fact, scripture says that he's half dead already. This guy's in rough shape. It's not good.
[00:13:25] Now the first person who next comes along is a Pharisee. He's a religious leader. He is the top of the food chain when it comes to righteous.
[00:13:32] He sees the man in the ditch and he thinks in his head, I got a lot to do today. I'm pretty important dude.
[00:13:40] I'm gonna walk right around him and he goes to the other side of the street, gets as far away as he can and just keeps going about his day. The next guy comes along as a Levite, another religious leader, same thing, sees the guy, pretty important guy, I got stuff to do, moving on. And he just goes about his day. Third guy that comes along is a Samaritan. Now, Samaritans are outcasts. They are frankly the vulnerable in that culture. They are of a different racial background. They are not acceptable in the eyes of the Jewish culture.
[00:14:10] And that guy comes along, now he sees him as well. And he thinks in his mind, I'm an important guy. I got a lot to do today and I'm going to help this guy.
[00:14:21] And so he crawls down in the ditch and he pulls the guy out of the mire and, and bandages his wounds and puts him on his animal, takes him into town, gets him set up at a, at an inn or a hotel, pays for his care, pays for his room, tells the innkeeper, I'll come back, I'll settle it up later. Take care of this guy, make sure he's well.
[00:14:43] It's amazing to me that this Samaritan views this person as his neighbor.
[00:14:52] And Jesus points that out.
[00:14:54] Jesus points out that this man, the Samaritan, is the one who is his neighbor because he is the vulnerable.
[00:15:02] He's not necessarily the guy that lives next door, but he's vulnerable.
[00:15:06] And it is your job, Jesus follower, to help the vulnerable.
[00:15:12] I would also want to point out something really specific about what the Samaritan does.
[00:15:17] He sacrifices in three really distinct ways.
[00:15:21] Number one, he sacrifices his comfort. He didn't want to get in the ditch with that dude, I promise you, none of us would. What are you talking about?
[00:15:29] He sacrifices his time, much more efficient, to just do what the Pharisee and the Levi did, just keep moving down the street.
[00:15:37] He sacrifices his money. In fact, it even records he gives the innkeeper to denarii. Denarii are simply a day's wage.
[00:15:45] So this guy, this Samaritan, who is among the poor outcasts of society, gives two full days wages to take care of a total stranger in need.
[00:15:59] And Jesus highlights that and he says, that's justice in my kingdom, that we would protect the vulnerable.
[00:16:08] And that's kind of the end of the conversation.
[00:16:11] So that's one example. Pretty common, pretty popular. The second example we find in Matthew 25.
[00:16:18] It's the parable of the sheeps and the goat.
[00:16:22] And we don't have time to go through every aspect of it because it's one of the longer parables Jesus shares. But it starts in verse 31 and ends in verse 46. And the first 11 verses are Jesus explaining the sheeps. The sheep are who he calls righteous.
[00:16:42] And as he talks about the sheep, he talks about the fact that they are about the vulnerable. They take care of the hungry, the thirsty, the people that need clothes, the people in prison, the stranger. They just take care of everybody in their world that is in need, that is vulnerable. That is what the sheep do.
[00:17:06] That's what the sheep are about. And Jesus calls the sheep righteous and welcomes them into the kingdom of God.
[00:17:16] Then in verse 42, he switches to talk about the goats.
[00:17:21] And we're going to read that right now.
[00:17:25] For I was hungry. Jesus speaking in the first person. I was hungry and you gave me Nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not close me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.
[00:17:44] They also will answer, they the goats. Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger needing clothes, sick in prison and did not help you? Jesus will reply, truly, I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.
[00:18:03] Then they the goats will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
[00:18:10] Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.
[00:18:18] Did not do for who?
[00:18:20] Oh, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the ones who need clothes, the sick, the ones in prison.
[00:18:31] When Jesus thinks about justice in our world, he thinks about the vulnerable.
[00:18:38] He thinks about those that are in that situation. And again, I want to point out because of what our society's thought process, he points out people that are both in situations that is their own fault and people that are in situations that are not their fault.
[00:18:57] He does not limit the conversation to, you're accountable for your actions, therefore it's not my responsibility to protect you.
[00:19:06] We are to protect the vulnerable.
[00:19:10] Period.
[00:19:12] Not optional.
[00:19:14] And Jesus's words at the end are pretty aggressive.
[00:19:18] There are some scholars that think when he talks about the sheeps and the goats, he is talking about believers in both cases, that there are believers who will say, I didn't have time to protect the vulnerable. I don't have the money to protect the vulnerable. I don't want to get uncomfortable protecting the the vulnerable.
[00:19:38] And it appears that it matters to Jesus that we have all three.
[00:19:44] That's why the Samaritan is such a great example.
[00:19:48] Because I'll be honest with you. Like, I hear lots of people talk about the fact, well, like, I've got plenty of money, I can help the vulnerable by giving money. But don't ask me to give my time. I'm too busy.
[00:20:01] I hear people that talk about, like, I've got time, man. Like, that's a resource. I've got a lot of. Just don't ask me to get uncomfortable. Don't put me in situations or around people I don't want to be around.
[00:20:13] I hear other people that would say, I don't have a problem being uncomfortable. I just, I don't have a lot of extra money. I don't want to get involved financially.
[00:20:24] I don't think that's our option. All in followers of Jesus are people that are going to get involved with the vulnerable. They're going to get involved and lose their comfort. They're going to give their time and they're going to give their money. Not one or two, but all three.
[00:20:42] That's some heavy teaching.
[00:20:45] Hope you're with me. Hope you haven't given up on me yet.
[00:20:48] But one of the things that's really important, I believe that we do around here decently well is we want to have good teaching and we want to understand what the scripture says.
[00:20:58] But equally important, we want to figure out how do we apply that to our lives? What do we do with that?
[00:21:05] Those are. Those are deep and heavy thoughts. How do we then take that and apply that to our lives? So I want to spend the rest of our time trying to think about that.
[00:21:15] The place I'm going to start with that is I want to give you a couple of examples of people throughout history that have had a conviction to help the vulnerable and made a tremendous difference. Difference.
[00:21:28] The first person I want to point out is a guy named Basil.
[00:21:31] It's a Turkish man. He lived in southern central turkey in the 4th century.
[00:21:38] So about 300 years after Jesus, this guy is living in Turkey. And the area of Turkey that he lives in is the very southern edge. And Paul on his missionary journeys went through that all the time. Over and over he went through that area. And so there's a Christian influence in that area in the 4th century.
[00:21:58] Bazille, as he walks around and looks at this town, he's in a pretty good sized town, not. Not huge, but pretty big.
[00:22:05] He sees things that break his heart. He sees things that impact him as a man of faith. He sees sick that are left to just die. He's. He sees sick people that are uncared for just on the side of streets.
[00:22:21] He sees children that are orphaned and don't have families and are just abandoned. And his heart breaks for those people. And he feels God's conviction. And so he does something amazing.
[00:22:35] He is the inventor of the hospital.
[00:22:38] He founded the very first hospital in Southern Turkey in 377.
[00:22:44] He founded the very first orphanage in the world in 377 in Turkey.
[00:22:50] So here's a believer, a follower of Jesus, a guy who's all in. And he says, I got to do something about this.
[00:22:58] So he acts.
[00:23:00] Another example, fast forward several hundred years to the late 1700s. A man named William Wilberforce.
[00:23:07] I'm kind of a history guy, so I love talking about this guy. He. He was elected to Parliament in 1780 as a non Christian, not a believer, not a follower of Jesus.
[00:23:18] And five years later, he is approached by a traveling evangelist, an evangelical man who convinced him of the truth of the gospel.
[00:23:27] And he came to faith in Christ.
[00:23:30] And as he came to faith in Christ as a man in parliament, he saw a need arise. Over the next couple years, he was approached by people that were involved in the slave trade in the Atlantic that had remorse and guilt about what they had done, seen and experienced.
[00:23:50] And so they talked to Wilberforce about that, and he felt the conviction that they shared.
[00:23:57] He spent the next 20 years as a member of Parliament doing everything in his power to try and outlaw slavery.
[00:24:10] In 1807, he had success.
[00:24:13] 20 years.
[00:24:15] He waged a war and the Slave Trade act was passed.
[00:24:22] And we were in a position where slavery was outlawed.
[00:24:26] This is what it looks like to promote justice by protecting the vulnerable. As a believer in Christ now, what I am not suggesting is that every single person in this room needs to invent the hospital or solve slavery.
[00:24:45] But what I am pointing out is that when a person of God feels a conviction that God places on their heart and they act, you have no idea what that could do.
[00:25:02] So now the question that remains is how do we do that? How does every single person in here act in a way to align their heart with Jesus that they might protect the vulnerable in their world? And I want to be really practical.
[00:25:17] Three steps. Every single person can do all three of these steps. These are not rocket scientist type steps. Anyone can do this. Three simple steps that you might protect the vulnerable where you are at today.
[00:25:32] Bozeman, Belgrade, Livingston, Ennis. Three forts, Manhattan, Amsterdam. It does not matter.
[00:25:40] Wherever you are today, you can make a difference to protect the vulnerable and represent Jesus.
[00:25:49] So how do we protect the vulnerable? Step one.
[00:25:53] Pray.
[00:25:54] Okay, but I'm going to clarify what I mean by that because there's a lot of you that just rolled your eyes at me. I saw that.
[00:25:59] And that's all right. I would have to.
[00:26:01] What I'm not saying is pray about the vulnerable. And that. I know that sounds counterintuitive. We should pray about the vulnerable and everything else. But in this instance, what I am asking you to do is I want you to pray that God would place a conviction on your heart for a vulnerable person. Person could be a group of people, but a vulnerable person, elderly, mentally ill, homeless.
[00:26:27] Go through the list. There's vulnerable people everywhere. It's not hard to find them.
[00:26:33] Pray that God would put a conviction on your heart that you would be able to act on who is it that grabs your attention?
[00:26:45] Who is it that when you're around, there's something happening in there?
[00:26:51] Who is that person or who are those people?
[00:26:55] Again, sex trafficking is a huge issue in our world today. I'm not telling you you have to be the one to solve sex trafficking. But if that's an issue that stirs your heart, could you be someone that could impact one person who's involved in sex trafficking?
[00:27:14] Andy Stanley often says a phrase that I just absolutely think is brilliant. He says, do for the one what you wish you could do for all.
[00:27:23] You may not be able to help every single person on the planet who's starving, but could you help one?
[00:27:30] Yeah, I could help one that seems reasonable.
[00:27:36] So step one is prayer. Step two is commit.
[00:27:40] Before you go to action, I want you to commit to counting the cost.
[00:27:48] Commit to count the cost of what it takes to protect the vulnerable.
[00:27:54] Because I don't want you to go about this lightly. Jesus talks about this as we come to faith that don't come to faith lightly. Being a Jesus follower is costly. If it doesn't cost you anything, you need to take measures to figure out why. Because Jesus is absolutely clear. Being his disciple, being his follower is expensive.
[00:28:18] The Samaritan shows us. It costs us comfort, time, money.
[00:28:24] Being a disciple of Jesus is costly. And I would vehemently encourage you to count that cost.
[00:28:33] Don't think about helping the vulnerable and not think about what it's going to cost you.
[00:28:39] Because you're stepping into something that you don't understand.
[00:28:42] I don't think when William Wilberforce thought he was going to attack slavery that he was going to dedicate 20 years of his life to one thing.
[00:28:54] We have to count the cost.
[00:28:57] We have to understand what it's going to cost us. And so I would caution you, pray for conviction.
[00:29:06] But when you find that conviction, do accounting. Count the cost and be committed. Because if you count the cost and you're still committed to move forward, now you're ready for the third step, which is do something.
[00:29:23] This is the point in time where we are not over spiritual. Don't over spiritualize this. Don't find the perfect solution.
[00:29:33] Don't do the thing that's going to change the world. For all of history, you've prayed, you've got a conviction.
[00:29:42] You've counted the cost and said, I'm in. I'm going to sacrifice to make this happen.
[00:29:48] Now do it.
[00:29:50] If there's any prayer involved in this point, it's just prayer for God to offer up an Opportunity. But that's the third step. Step in and do it now. I think I would be remiss if I left you there because I think it's important to offer at least one example of what this might look like in a normal everyday life.
[00:30:16] So I submit to you. Three years ago, what happened to me.
[00:30:22] Three years ago, my daughter went on a journey, mission trip to Ethiopia.
[00:30:28] And when she came back, she was full of conviction around what she had seen and heard and experienced. She saw orphans and widows, the poor and the malnourished. She saw so many things that troubled her. But as she expressed what she experienced, something shifted in my heart.
[00:30:54] Something just small. It wasn't.
[00:30:57] It wasn't like, oh, it was just something. It was like a pebble in my shoe if I was to put it. Something just kind of just was off.
[00:31:08] And so I thought, you know what I should be praying about what is off? Like, I should just. I should take that in. There must be something there with that. And so I began to pray.
[00:31:17] Now, if I was holy like y', all, like, I think I would have understood instantly and I would have been ready to move forward. But I pray for six months. God, what is that? Is this real? Is this bad pizza? What do we got here? Is this conviction that yout're stirring in me? Am I supposed to do something with this?
[00:31:35] And I just kept praying and praying about that.
[00:31:38] And I got to a place literally six or seven months later where I was pretty confident it wasn't bad pizza.
[00:31:47] And so I began to think about what would that mean? Like, how would I get involved in Ethiopia in an orphans that. I mean, they're halfway around the world, literally. I don't know anything about this. I don't know how to be helpful. What would I do?
[00:32:02] But I began to just say, lord, if this is what you're calling me to, then I will commit to the sacrifice necessary.
[00:32:11] I counted the cost. I said, dude, I really like to play golf. And this is July. I would have to go there.
[00:32:19] It's prime golf season in Montana. We have a short golf season.
[00:32:23] But I was willing to give up that comfort to do that.
[00:32:27] I was willing to think about my time. This is two weeks, like it's a long time to go be in a poverty instricted country and dealing with the dust and the nastiness that is. And trust me, it's pretty brutal.
[00:32:44] And I felt a conviction that the Lord was saying, and you need to sacrifice your finances to do it.
[00:32:51] So I wasn't even going to ask other people to pay for me, which would have been even better.
[00:32:56] And so I counted that cost. I had prayed, I had received conviction. I counted the cost, and I stepped into that and I went that summer.
[00:33:05] And then the story behind how I went is amazing, as I had counted the cost and gotten to the place where I said, yes, I'll do it, Lord, if you provide the opportunity, like less than a week, week or two later, Brandon pops in my office. And anytime the missions guy pops in your office, you're like, this is not good.
[00:33:24] And he says, brian, we had someone who can't go and lead the trip to Ethiopia in July. We need you to go.
[00:33:31] Would you go?
[00:33:34] I didn't have to pray about it. Yeah, I'm in. So I went. So I went that summer. And then Brandon asked me to go again last summer, and I took a team last summer as well.
[00:33:45] And I'm willing to go anytime he needs me to go because he, God, has placed a conviction on my heart to act and to do something for that group of people. Now, again, what I'm not saying to you is everyone in here should go to Ethiopia and help orphans, because that's not where your conviction is. Probably almost none of you in here, that's a conviction of yours.
[00:34:08] But you might have a conviction about one of those other groups here in our valley. And I would encourage you to act on your conviction.
[00:34:17] No judgment. I don't expect everyone to have my conviction, and you shouldn't expect everyone to have your conviction. God made us a body of believers. Paul talks about the fact that every one of us has work to be done that is preordained.
[00:34:33] Some of that work involves protecting the vulnerable that you have conviction on.
[00:34:38] And so each of us should step into that.
[00:34:42] Now, that also means that I talk to a lot of people about Ethiopian orphans in the area where you feel conviction to help the vulnerable. You should do the same. Talk to the people in your small group, talk to your friends, talk to your family members, rally people to the cause.
[00:34:59] But be okay. If they say, that's not where my conviction is, that's okay. They have their conviction. They'll act on it. You follow where God has led you. You obey his lead in your life, and you act that out.
[00:35:15] That's what all in followers of Jesus do.
[00:35:18] They listen to the Holy Spirit and they obey his calling.
[00:35:21] And when it comes to protecting the vulnerable, they understand that that is where God's heart is aligned. And they want their heart aligned with his heart.
[00:35:30] And so I would offer you that I would offer you to pray and consider that, to move into that here as soon as possible. Let's pray.
[00:35:42] Father God, I want to just thank you for your word. I want to thank you for your teaching. It's hard teaching. It's hard to hear that you've called us to get uncomfortable and sacrifice our time and our money and to get involved in the lives of people that may not be like us. They may not think like us, they may not fit our worldview.
[00:36:04] But you call us to protect those and bring justice to this world, just as you brought justice to this world through your coming and your teaching.
[00:36:13] And I pray, Lord, that you would give each of us a conviction, speak to our hearts and give us a group, a person that you would ask us to get involved with. I pray that you would help us to count the cost, help us to think clearly about what it will cost us. And, Lord, I pray that you would lead us to action.
[00:36:32] I know that if all the thousands of people that will hear this message this weekend were to act, this valley would be a very different place. And I pray for that to happen in your name.
[00:36:44] Amen.
