Experience, See, Touch & Walk - Part I

2 Corinthians 13-15 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack-that there may be equality. As it is written, "He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack."

What powerful words. I am moved by the true abundance I have. I don't believe that the Lord wants us to feel guilty for having much, but I also don't believe the lie that we Americans have fallen prey to either. So many times, including me, have fallen prey to the justification that God has blessed us as Americans so therefore we don't have to be concerned with our spending. He has blessed us to have big houses, and big cars, and to be able to spend as we feel the need, or should I say want. I am guilty of that. But if we take the scripture above and use it in context, God spells out the way we should live.

It says our abundance should supply their lack. We don't need to lower our selves to poverty, but the abundance which has come from the Lord is NOT for the bigger better car, it is not for the bigger better house, it is not so we can eat out 3 days a week instead of 1 day, it is not for our MORE, but for their lack. God did not give us these guidelines to punish us, but to free us.

This is the time, NOW is the time to rise up and give of our abundance before we have nothing left to give. I believe that Jesus is calling Americans to step up...too long have we lived for ourselves and the American dream...NOW is the time we need to abandon self and live for Jesus.

I read this article in a National Geographic Magazine May 2009:

It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing & waking up right. We sit down at the dinner table, pick up a fork and take a juicy bite oblivious to the double helping of global ramifications on our plates. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice - not from Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are profound.

The countries that are starving to death are providing our abundance of food. Granted their governments are corrupt, but what are we believers doing about it?

"As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." James 2:26

In a devotion book called Hope for the Journey put out by Shaohannah's Hope, a ministry for orphans that Steven Curtis Chapman directs I read this by Kerry Hasenbalg:

In much of the American church today there is a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of fulfillment, particularly among the youth, and I believe this is due in large part to how many of us have missed a major ingredient of Biblical Christianity: caring for the Least.
Throughout Scripture and throughout the history of His people, God has called His chosen ones to spend themselves on behalf of the poor, the oppressed, the orphan, the widow, the prisoner and the stranger in the land....Much of the evangelical church is longing for a deeper experience of God, and the irony is that it is among those we too often ignore and avoid - the orphans, widows, poor, sick and oppressed - where God said He would be. There we will experience Him, see Him, touch Him and walk with Him.

The truth is that our obedience to God is the treasure map to untold riches!! I want to experience, see, touch and walk with God the way He intended me too, don't you??