Monday, April 22, 2013

Happy Creator Day

As a follower of Jesus I need to take care of the earth. God commands us as humans to take care of the earth as caretakers of His creation. Today is earth day. I will not celebrate earth day. I chose to celebrate Creator Day.

I don't want ot be guilty of as Paul says in Romans 1:25 exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiping and serving created things rather than the Creator.

I will worship today not the earth but the Maker of Heaven and Earth - JESUS!

I will as a follower of Jesus take care of His creation. I will begin by taking care of the most important part of creation - People. I will also take care of the rest of creation because it glories the Creator.

I wish you a Happy Creator Day.

Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls
                           Joe

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Washing Feet

I was reading John 13 about Jesus washing the feet of His disciples. I was feeling pretty good about what I was leading our faith family do it. We were reaching out to the homeless, the hungry, and hurting. We were sharing Jesus' story (the gospel) with people in very creative ways. But God gave me a wake up call in what really washing people feet meant.

You see when Jesus washed the disciples feet they were dirty, I mean really dirty. They were feet of men who walked dusty and dirty roads wearing at the most sandals. Their dirty feet had dirt and other interesting things on them. The act of washing other people's feet was a very unpleasant thing to do. So as I patted myself on the back for all my faith family was doing God showed me what really washing feet was all about.

Sunday, April 7 we had a lady in our worship, Sylvia, who is homeless. She lives on the street and sleeps behind where my wife works. I spoted her at the beggining of our worship time and instead of rejoicing that God had brought her there I just prayed that God would help just behave. When I offered the invitation at the end of the service who came forward - Sylvia. She came up to me and I thought I'll deal with her quickly and she can go back and sit down. I ask her what she wanted and she said with tears in her eyes she wanted me to pray for her. I ask what she wanted me to pray for and she pointed to her head and then her heart and said they don't work right. As I began to pray she grabbed my arm and held on tight. When I had finsihed she looked at me and said thank you and gave me a hug and held on. I found myself hugging her back. As I hugged this homeless, smelly, dirty, street person God very directly said that now had a small interesting of what it meant to wash someone's feet.

Following Jesus means washing people's feet and feet are dirty.

Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls
                              Joe