We had the 2nd
annual Mighty Women of God Conference at First Baptist Church last
Saturday…about 100 or so women showed up. There should have been 1,000 in
attendance. Where were you???? Okay, I know I should have sent out an email.
The guest speaker
was Janet Denison. You can go to www.janetdenison.com to learn more about
her. She and her husband, Jim Denison, PhD also have a ministry called Denison
Forum on Truth and Culture, you can go to www.denisonforum.org
to check it out…
Janet said that by
the time today’s second graders get to voting age, they will be persecuted for
their faith in the USA. She said that when you add all the Christians together
from around the world, the USA and Great Britain make up about 6%. Since we
have smart phones…we can now take the Bible EVERYWHERE we go in the world.
Folks across the water are hungry for Jesus and are risking life and limb to
find Him and serve Him…but not here.
In the USA we have
Miley Cyrus twerking, Phillip Seymour Hoffman dying of a drug overdose and kids suing their parents after they leave home at 18 for financial support. A man carried a
gun - legally, mind you - into a movie theatre, shoots and kills a man over
texting. Kids are killing themselves because they're bullied at school and online.
Let’s bring this
closer to home…we have a task force discussing "what to do about" the downtown homeless
population, a woman using a walker was run over by an SUV at 3rd and
Lewis…and the driver kept going. A man
shot and killed himself and before his body was taken
away, folks stopped to take pictures.
Subsidized housing units are being destroyed in order to make room for
lofts and apartments for the upper middle class. Before a woman became `a dying woman’ she applied for Title 19 so
she could get on the transplant list (you can’t be on a transplant list without
insurance) but every medical record started out with, ‘cirrhosis of the liver
from chronic alcoholism’ even though she had been sober for years…she never got
the insurance and died.
I could go on, and
on, and on…
So, how did you
react to what I just wrote? Did you shake your head and then say, “Hey, after
we drop the kids off let’s go to a movie?” Did you skip over it because it’s
“just too hard to read,” and act like everything “out there” is fine. If our
heart is hard, if we are desensitized to the hurting of others, we need to
beseech the Father to remove the cheese crust from around our heart. What we’re
missing is compassion. We really don’t care anymore. It’s just none of our
business. Really???
We can do more. We
can do better.
I have never seen
so many people who, to everyone looking on, should have hit rock bottom years
ago…but people’s rock bottoms are further down than I have ever seen. People
have hard hearts. Loving people to Jesus in the USA is harder than it’s ever
been. Immediate gratification, “I deserve it,’ the notion that ‘God never did
anything for me before, why should I seek Him now’ or "God, who?" – is running rampant. People
are willing to try anything to numb the pain…something like 38,000 people
overdosed in 2010 – that’s more than traffic accidents and guns. Scary stuff.
We didn’t make this
mess over night. But, what are we doing to make it better?
GUTS church is
working on putting together a public/private event at Union Public Schools; a
massive outreach to our community - the details are still being ironed out.
It’s not enough.
Roughly 84,000
people live in a `food desert' in Tulsa.
The Real Good Food Truck, a mobile grocery store will be making stops at
12 locations in north Tulsa and west Tulsa starting this summer.
It’s not enough.
Winter Jam, E
Conference, Christian musicians, Beth Moore, Secret Keeper Tween Conference,
Promise Keepers…they all come to Tulsa.
It’s not enough.
Many churches in
our community have benevolence ministries and give away food and clothes and
help with utilities. There are
ministries throughout Tulsa who set up shop once a week to share the gospel and
provide a hot meal. My church, First Baptist Church Tulsa provides a night of respite once a quarter for caregivers of special needs kids. We have two Caring Centers, one downtown
and one in south Tulsa.
It’s not enough.
Tulsa does
fundraisers – tons of them in our community – for breast cancer, Alzheimer’s,
heart disease, etc. The idea is to raise awareness and raise money to help fund
a cure…
It’s not enough.
Many churches have
Celebrate Recovery meetings, Grief Share, Divorce Care, Stephen Ministry, etc.
It’s not enough.
What can truly make
a difference? You. Yes, you.
I’m a social
worker, it is very easy for me to look around and see all of the holes in the
system; the enormous gap between the rich and the poor and I fight like crazy
to keep people from falling through the cracks and perishing. But, there are so
many and they are perishing so quickly…partly because the system sucks and
partly because nobody cares enough to advocate for the down and out. It’s hard,
really hard to do, there are many obstacles and often it takes so long that we lose people in the process. There are not enough advocates. I hear pew sitters
all the time saying we don’t “know anyone” who needs help or we can’t find
anyone to invite to church. Really? We’re looking with our eyes
closed. If we don’t see a problem, then we don’t have to do anything…so we live
in denial and ignorance until the poor, the hurting, the mentally ill, the
addict, shows up at our doorstep or they turn out to be a family member and
THEN we want to do something. If we’re
hiding in the closet of denial until “one of those people” touches us…I
promise, we won’t have to wait very long.
I have vented many
times asking churches to do more. To provide free child care, to provide respite
for caregivers taking care of family members with Alzheimer’s, to serve food 3
or 4 or 5 times a week, provide transportation to those trying to get to work
or school on time because if they rely on our transit system they’ll be late or
if they work on Sunday they’re out of luck.
There are kids throughout our community who need mentors – men and
women. We have more seniors living alone; isolated, overmedicated, hungry and
depressed than we could ever imagine. Trust me, there's at least one in your neighborhood.
When I ask the
tough question to a leader in a church, “So WHY are we not doing more outreach
to share Jesus with our community?” It’s not because we don’t have money, we have a lot of
financial donors; Tulsa has been “the” charity capital before.
We don’t have
volunteers. We don’t have you.
We’re a selfish
bunch. We also have our priorities messed up. How many activities do our kids
really need to be in? How many vacations to Disney World do we need to take?
How much TV do we have to watch? How much time do we REALLY need to text? twitter?
Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? Really??? Really???
How many outfits do we really need? How many concerts and evenings eating out do we need? How much “me” time do we
need? How many hours do we have to golf
or scrapbook a week?
When we say we
don’t have time to volunteer…so what exactly are we filling our time with? And
did we talk to Jesus about it? Is what we fill our life with what we want, what
we think we should do, because we want to sound, “Busy with important stuff?”
My pastor has
thrown down the gauntlet…over Lent he has asked us to sacrifice one thing with
intention and faithfulness; his family is giving up TV in the evenings. He has also asked us to share Jesus with one
person…over a 40-day period. That’s it. It’s really not a lot…except to selfish
people.
I would be willing
to bet if we sacrificed “me” God would teach us a lot. Make a point to spend
time with Jesus over Lent…ask Him if we’re living “my” life or are we living
“His?” There’s probably a whole lotta “me” in there.
We’re selfish and
we like it that way. We’ve earned that expensive dinner, that new purse, that
antique bookcase, that vacation to Hawaii.
So, we can either accept that we are selfish and we want to live for our
enjoyment and pleasure and quit acting like He matters when there's dust on our Bible OR we can pray
for forgiveness - and mean it.
When we repent,
then we can truly become servants. It’s hard. Darn hard. But, nothing is more
important than our relationship with Jesus. Nothing.
People are
perishing. Are you listening? People are literally dying all around us and
we’re acting as if it’s okay, “Maybe I should have talked to him about Jesus...well that's life.” Hard hearts. 6% - USA and Great Britain
combined are Christ followers. That’s not very many. It’s time to care. It’s
time to sob over people perishing and then wipe our eyes and ask God to show us
how He wants to use us. Right here, right now. Hurry. Eternity is urgent.
“Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.”
At the sound of
their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with
smoke.
“Woe to me,” I
cried (Isaiah). “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among
a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Then one of the
seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs
from the altar. With it he touched my
mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and
your sin atoned for.”
Then I heard the
voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?
And I said, “Here
am I. Send me!!” Isaiah 6: 3-9
Where are all of
the Isaiahs????
d
