The Future (Day 11)

Sometimes tomorrow is uncertain. You can stress about what is going to happen. You can become anxious over what lies around the corner. You can try to believe that things will not work out and that it is all up to you to figure out every aspect of your life….Or you can take what Christ said in Matthew 6:33-34 and live by it: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I have never focused very much on verse 34 until one day I was sitting in a home located in the projects of Mobile Alabama and my teammate, Holly, shared it with the lady living there. I’ve had it on my mind ever since.

My vision for Revive certainly hasn’t changed, but the process of getting there has only become more complex. Challenges have come out the woodwork to confront me and my friends, but we will continuously refuse to stop campaigning the belief that the world will know that we are Christians by our love.

While Connor, my Dad and I were working in DC this past winter, Connor told me about his plans to develop a sermon to preach concerning what he learned leading up to and during the DC trip. The title of the sermon had already been determined: Touching Lepers. If Connor ever gets the chance to deliver this lesson in the future (and I hope he does) then I certainly do not want to ruin it for his audience. However, as me and Connor discussed just a few months ago, sermons are just sparks.

A preacher is flint and his words are steel. When he presents his lesson, he is just creating sparks. If his audience, the people listening to him, are soaking wet, literally drowning in their own biases, judgements, and close-minded traditions, then the spark will do nothing but fall on deaf ears. However, if the people are willing to burn with passion and love, to truly and wholeheartedly have God light the fire in their hearts again, then a sermon just might ignite or add to the bonfire that is a Christian’s love for all of humanity.

And that is what Revive is all about. Reviving within ourselves a passion for the poor, but not just the poor, but the lepers in our lives – the ones you would never dare touch; but Christ would. The outcasts, the oppressed, whether it be something they did, something they are, or something they believe, you reach out to them regardless and touch them and show them the grace Christ offers. I love some of the analogies Jeff Bethke uses. When you go to someone and want to show them a better life, a life like Christ’s, a life worth living, you go to them like you’re a homeless person going to another homeless person and you have found an abundance of bread and you say “come on, there is plenty, there is enough for everyone. Just come.” The homeless person (you) didn’t earn that bread, didn’t win it, didn’t steal it; instead you found it and it was given freely to you and then you go out and share it with others. That doesn’t make you any better than anyone else, you’re still no one compared to Christ, that’s why it is called Grace. And Jesus Christ is that bread we have found.

The future is uncertain, the challenges are at the doorstep; but regardless of all that, I have found bread that will never let me go hungry, no matter what the future holds. If God is for us, who can possibly be against us? Jesus Christ is interceding on our behalf at the throne of God. For who can separate us from the LOVE of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword? No, rather I am convinced that neither death nor life, not even angels or earthly governments, not even things present nor things to come, no power on earth, no height or depth, no, nothing in the entire universe will be able to separate us from the LOVE of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If all that is true, why worry about the future?

– SB

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