Being a Neighbour

I attended a conference today called "Next Change!" organised by LoveSingapore regarding social justice and our response. The keynote speaker was Mike Servello, pastor of Mount Zion Ministries in Utica, New York. His testimonies of God's faithfulness in his ministry are nothing short of amazing, with stories of people donating buildings, food and medical supplies to him out of the blue, as well as God literally multiplying what is donated. Anyhow, I'm pretty psyched up right now, so I thought I'd better note down some of the key learning points before I forget.

Learning to Love

One of the most critical things I've learnt over the past couple of days is that social work needs to start with love and we need to learn to shift the focus from ourselves to others. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the expert of the law had asked Jesus "who is my neighbour", but after Jesus tells the parable, His question to the expert is "who was the neighbour to the man?" Very often, our desire to help others springs from our own guilt or self-interest. This is apparent when we pray and ask God "So, what's your plan for my life?" Henry Blackaby argues that the appropriate prayer should be "God, show me where you are working that I may join you in that work."

Much in the same way, our ministry has to begin with love and not spring out of obligation. Be it with kids, the poor, the marginalised, your colleagues, etc. you first need to love for your subsequent actions to be genuine. People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. Any ministry borne out of obligation is unlikely to have the legs to run very far. As William James said, "The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it." Without the firm foundation of love, it's unlikely that our ministry will outlast our feeble efforts.

Noticing Other People's Pain

Another thing that was impressed upon me was that caring for the poor and marginalised is not a suggestion, but a command. There are numerous verses in the Bible that speak of our required response to poverty...

"If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered."

(Proverbs 21:13)

We often read such verses and think "How interesting... I'll go home and ponder about it." If we took the Bible seriously, we would be stirred into action! If we have two tunics, we should be out there sharing the other one with someone else, and them same goes if we have food (Luke 13:11). God is serious about helping the poor, and we should be too if we're serious about God.

Placing Reliance on God

Once we are able to hear the cry of the needy, we need to believe that God can do amazing things through us. As above, we have read countless verses of how God protects His people.

"Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the Lord delivers him in times of trouble. The Lord will protect him and preserve his life; he will bless him in the land and not surrender him to the desires of his foes. The Lord will sustain him on his sickbed and restore him from his bed of illness"

Psalm 41:1-3

Sometimes we wonder whether God will actually deliver on what He says. I found myself thinking that if I pursued a full-time career in social work, the pay is probably not going to be enough for me to send my kids overseas to study for example, but then the Lord reminded me that "Hey, don't you trust that I will provide for those needs when the time comes?" So again, if we take God seriously, why do we worry about the outcome so long as we're sure that we are acting according to His direction?

Widespread Effects of Sin

The last thing that learnt today was that the effect of sin in my life has an an influence that goes beyond me. Previously, I thought that if I sin, it hurts my relationship with God, and so I lead a less fulfilling life (which sucks, but the bad stuff stops with me). The reality is that when I sin, I feel ashamed, and so I shy away from God's work. Coupled with the fact that my spiritual ears would probably be impaired as a result, I would not be blessing as many people as I should be. The result is that my sin prevents others from receiving God's blessing, which sucks big time! So there's no such thing as a private sin. [For more on the effect of individual sin on the community, see Joshua 7]

So that's it. Hopefully, as I've said many times, these principles will spur me to take action on my own part :P