Walking in Promises

Looking at, understanding and praying for God’s promises are all fine and dandy, but the true life of the servant of God is that of faith.  What is faith?  Faith is knowing that God is both strong enough and kind enough to make his promises come true.  Faith is not necessarily understanding the limitations of the promises, but knowing that they are truth.  Faith is seeing one’s future, as promised by God, and so letting it effect one’s present.

Faith is not just a matter of intellectual assent only.  To acknowledge God and his promises is not faith.  To proclaim the confession is not the life God desires us to live.  All of sanctification and all of the life of discipleship can be summarized as living out the knowledge that the promises will be fulfilled.

On the streets are many who are landless, homeless, jobless.  This is not how they prefer to live, but there are no opportunities for them to live any differently.  Sometimes they despair, sometimes they laugh, sometimes they get drunk, sometimes they pray.  After so many years on the street it is easy to look at the situation and to determine that it will never change.  That we might as well allow despair and drunkenness to win, to forget about the sufferings of this life.

God made the promise that those who remain in Him, who depend on Him for His salvation, will gain the land.  This means that we need not pursue land ourselves, even as Abraham did not.  We need not have a regular profession, a regular livelihood—because it is to come.  If we have a livelihood, that is all well and good, but our lives need not depend on it.  For our true livelihood is to come.  We need not give into despair or fruitless anger. God will provide

There are many who are jobless and who live hand to mouth.  They don’t know where the money for groceries or bills will come.  They are riddled with guilt for not providing for their families or even themselves as they ought.  They don’t know what to do, where to go.  They try to get a job, but there just isn’t one to be had.  In the meantime, their friends, more and more, see them as a burden, a nagging reminder that there is poverty and people who just “can’t get their act together.”  Perhaps they should just curl up and die, because no one will support them, help them in their need.

God made the promise that He would give food, clothing and all necessities to those who seek God’s kingdom before these mundane items.  The life of faith, then, is to not worry about food, clothing, paying bills and such, but to simply seek God and to do as He wills.  This is not a sacrifice, but a blessing, for it is a life free from the constraints of normal life that everyone else around us is bound by.  We can live in a way of assurance that God will provide.

God made the promise that we who have His Spirit will be given the opportunity to live in a holy manner, true to God.  This does not mean we do not on occasion fail, but that the path in which we are headed is God’s path.  We must confess our sins, but most of all, in our work for sanctification, we know that the strength is there.  We need not fret about how we will overcome sin.  God will provide.

God made the promise that the oppressors will be conquered and those who take advantage of the poor will be set aside.  We who are vulnerable need deliverance from these oppressors, for they demand all we have for the sake of their extravagant lifestyles.  God has promised, we will be delivered, although God will also do all He can to deliver their souls, as well.  God will provide.

God has made the promise that there would be justice, peace on earth in His own terms, not based on a compromise between wealthy governments.  That the poor would rule.  That there would be healing for all, without doctor’s mistakes and financial limitations.  That there will be a community that cares for each other, not rejecting or hating a single member of the community.

God will provide. 

At one point, Jesus asked, “But when the Son of Man comes, will there be faith on the earth?”  He was just talking about those who sought after justice from God and was trusting that such justice can only be found through Him.  Such believe takes place in action.

Trusting God is praying to God, even when the promise isn’t received.

Trusting God is living for God, even when we don’t have the strength to do it.

Trusting God is apologizing to God, and making it right when we screw up.

Trusting God is rejoicing in God, in the midst of horrors, because God’s promise is that the horrors won’t last forever.

Trusting God is contentment in God, because He will sustain us until the promise is completed.

Anawimless Society: Obtaining God's Blessing

A depiction of cross references in the Bible

In our blog, up to this point, we have travelled a wide breadth of Scripture.  

At the very beginning, creation itself, we found that God chose humanity, not because of their glory, but because of their weakness, compared to the other “gods” He had as options to rule the world.  We also looked at how God chose the weak and helpless to uphold so that He could be seen as the One with strength.  God’s help, we saw in Psalm 146 is for all the poor, to grant them food and to deliver them from oppression.  And from Samuel’s mother, Hannah, we learned how it is God’s plan to raise the poor from the dust to no smaller place than the top of the heap of humanity.  And, finally, we saw how Jesus actually chose the poor to make up his school, as an indicator of who would enter into God’s kingdom.  The anawim are the apple of God’s eye, the focus of His salvation. 

What Jesus didn't say

Yet we look at our churches today, and they don’t reflect God’s vision in this way.  In many ways, we indicate that the poor are separated from God’s people, not the heart of it. In many churches, they see a “spirit of poverty” as a form of oppression.  Of course, poverty is a limitation, a difficulty, but it is just as much a symbol of blessing as it is a kind of oppression.  In testimonies and stories of the church, we talk about poverty as something we used to have, but have been delivered from.  This implies that God’s true people aren’t people burdened by poverty. It has been an assumption and often a bold theological point that God’s blessing and sign of approval is to be wealthy or at least living a middle class lifestyle.  Yet Jesus declared the poor to be blessed and to be God’s people. 

The church is a culture as well as a spiritual people.  And the culture of 99 percent of American churches is the culture of the middle class who have the next level in the social order as their goal.  Our church leaders usually want to fill their churches with suburbanites instead of single moms with drug babies.

The poorest of the poor are not found to darken our door—the homeless, mentally ill, panhandlers, illegal immigrants, itinerant farm workers, sufferers from AIDS.  And this is not because we do not welcome them.  It is because they see the culture of the church as being different from the culture that they live with.  To be a part of the church, for them is to be converted, not to a spiritual reality, but a social and ethical system which is unknown to them.

When our churches do talk about the poor, it is about ministry ‘to’ the poor, not being ‘of’ the poor.  We are seen as the people who are wealthy who need to assist, help, save, deliver, feed, clothe or house the poor.  Even in this, the poor are on the outside of the church and the church is “reaching out” to them.  Why?  Because in our hearts, we know that we don’t commune with the poor.  They aren’t a part of us. 

The religion that began as a gathering of the poor, now finds itself locked out of the blessing God offers to the poor.  We are outside of many of the promises of Jesus because, frankly, we don’t need them.  We pray the Lord’s prayer regularly, but we don’t really mean that we want God’s kingdom to come, because that would mean that the economics and society that our current salvation is found would have to be set aside.  We don’t really need to pray for our daily bread because we have our refrigerators full of this month’s food.  And, often, we don’t see God as our deliverer, because we have so many resources at our fingertips.

We need to seriously consider the option that our churches feel empty of the Spirit, seem devoid of life, have pews filled with air more than bodies because we have stopped taking God seriously as a means of salvation.  If we refuse poverty, how will God gain the glory of delivering the poor?  If we no longer are the needy, then how will God grant our needs?  Yes, we are responsible, we are strong, we care for those we have to take of.  But will God be found among a people who speak His glory, but never reach out for it, never live it out in their lives?