Who Cares? Social Justice

Who Cares?

Social Justice

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

June 1/3, 2007

Good eve/morning! It is great to be back at Fellowship. I missed you guys, although I did speak in Ethiopia at a church and they were disappointed that I spoke so short, that I didn’t go longer. I like those people. But I like you, too. John Stanley and I just completed a great ministry run, our world tour. We started in New Zealand, doing a pastor’s conference there, and then we were on to join the Ethiopia team to discover what God had for us in that part of the world. We’ll share more about that at the end of this message, but these next few years we are going to be able to make a huge difference in a lot of people’s lives in that struggling part of the world, in addition to our other projects like Cuba and Mexico.

Today is an important message, at least it is an important message to God…because what we are talking about is something that is very high on his priority list for his people…yet to be honest maybe not so high on our list, at least it has not been on mine. That’s what we are talking about in this series, Who Cares. We are focusing on some things that God cares a lot about that we tend to blow off, or at least shove aside. This week we are talking about social justice, about the poor and oppressed in this world, about economic disparity—the injustice of some in the world having way too much and most of the world having not enough to survive.

A month or so before I left for Ethiopia, God put that in the center of my heart and thinking, which made me uncomfortable. In fact, I am one messed up dude. Really. In my time in the Bible, I’ve been reading God’s perspective about social justice, and it has messed me up. Since I feel kind of lonely in my messed-up-ness, I am going to mess you up today, too. I’m that kind of guy, just want to spread the love, share the messed-up-ness.

For years, this issue of social justice and economic fairness, our responsibility to be a help to the helpless and a voice for the voiceless, has been shoved in the corner of my thinking, and I’ve liked it there. I knew it was a biblical issue, but stored it in the back of a closet somewhere. I liked it in the closet, because I didn’t have to think about it much. Liberal churches focus on that. But over the last few months, God has forced it out of the closet, right in the middle of the kitchen table. I don’t think that is just about me, either. I believe as a church we tend to do the same thing that I have done, and in our general circle of churches we have certainly been comfortable with this issue stuffed in the back of the closet. Today, we are going to pull it out of the closet and see God’s heart for the poor, the oppressed, and for us who have more than we need…who have not only possessions but also power, and what that means for us. Today, I’m just going to take you on my journey of messed-up-ness. So, ready to be messed up? Let’s go.

One of the passages I read that kicked off my messed-up state of life was in Amos, and it was as I was preparing to speak in New Zealand. Here it is in the Message translation:

Slide: ________________ Amos 5:21-24 (The Message)

I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions (remember I was preparing to speak at a conference). I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image-making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want. Amos 5:21-24. Wow. I read that, and it made me take a huge step back. God is serious about this. He’s not even polite about it. I’m from Alabama, where we like people to be polite, including our God. We expect that. But God is not polite about this; he is passionate about the poor and devoted to justice. Maybe I can’t keep this in the closet.

That took me on a journey of searching the Scriptures, starting in the Old Testament—and that really messed me up…because God talks a lot about this. He talks more about social justice than probably anything else in the Old Testament. It is the primary thing he expects from his people.

I read in Psalms and Proverbs for example how much he identifies with the poor and the voiceless.

Slide: ________________ Proverbs 19:17

Slide: ________________ Psalm 140:12

Slide: ________________ Psalm 146:7-9

He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done. Pr. 19:17. I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy. Ps. 140:12. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous.  The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. Psalm 146:5-9. God takes up the cause of the poor and the oppressed, those who are helpless and voiceless. That didn’t mess me up too much though, because I know God is that way. But what started to mess me up was reading his instructions and expectations of his people. This is something that has to be very high on our list, and it just wasn’t all that high on mine. In the Old Testament, a chief reason God brought judgment to his people was not just immorality but more important to God was social justice. In Isaiah, he says to his people,

Slide: ________________ Isaiah 10:1-3

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? Is. 10:1-3. In Jeremiah, he is letting them know that a nation is coming to wipe them out unless they repent, and here is God’s charge against his people:

Slide: ________________ Jeremiah 5:27-29

“Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. Should I not punish them for this?" declares the LORD. "Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?” Jeremiah 5:26-29. They did not serve as a voice for the voiceless and a help for the helpless, and God is just flat ticked off. Later, he gives them a chance to make it right, to avoid the coming judgment:

Slide: ________________ Jeremiah 7:5-7

“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. Jer 7:5-7. They have a chance, but they don’t take it. They leave the issue of justice in the closet. I’ll read one more Old Testament passage, but please know that there are many. In Jeremiah 22, God is contrasting one evil king with this father who was good and justice, and here’s what he says,

Slide: ________________ Jeremiah 22:15c-16

“{Your father} did what was right and just,so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord. What a statement! Is that not what it means to know me? People who know me care about what I care about, they are a help for the helpless and a voice for the voiceless. As I read these passages and saw God’s heart and thought about my own life, it was disturbing. When we are over-consumptive and under-caring, God just gets angry. But maybe this is just an Old Testament thing. Maybe all this social justice stuff is an Old Testament deal, so I can put all this back in the closet where I like it.

Yet, then I started reading the New Testament from this perspective, and it didn’t help. I just go more messed up. For example, when Jesus described his mission, why he came to this planet, listen to how he says it:

Slide: ________________ Luke 4:18-19

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Lk 4:18-19. Jesus said he came for the poor and oppressed. I’ve emphasized other of Jesus’ mission statements like,

Slide: ________________ Luke 19:10 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

“The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.” That makes sense, but this is different. And sure enough, when you see how Jesus ministered, he did what he came to do. Being devoted to the poor and oppressed was not just a hobby, but a focus. And that doesn’t go away in the rest of the New Testament. Early on when the church was founded, they created a community of equality and justice. There was no one needy in the church it says in Acts because they all shared, and that love spilled out on to the wider community around them. In James 1, James, the half-brother of Jesus, who grew up with Jesus, gives the bottom-line of true spirituality. And it isn’t Bible knowledge, or Bible memory, or how much time we spend in devotions, or what % of church services we attend. Those things are means to the end of spirituality, but they aren’t the end. In the end, here’s what spirituality looks like from God’s perspective:

Slide: ________________  James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. That’s how James boils it down, how true spirituality shows itself.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us about the last judgment, what he will look for as an outward way to show true inner belief. I’m talking about the sheep and goat judgment, where he talks about separating the sheep, those that will go on to heaven, and the goats, those who won’t. Actually, Ethiopia really helped this passage come alive to me, because of how similar the sheep and goats are there—the same kind of sheep and goats that Jesus was talking about that would have been on the hillsides in ancient Palestine. I’m used to the kind of sheep and goats we have here in petting zoos, and it seems obvious (show pictures).

Slide: ________________Pic of sheep and goat

That’s a sheep and that’s a goat. But in Ethiopia, you can’t tell

Slide: ________________ (show goat pic).

The sheep and goats look alike…the only way even they could tell was that the sheep tended to have their tails going down and the goats going up.

So, how do you tell the sheep from the goats? What demonstrates true saving faith? Listen to Jesus:

Slide: ________________ Matthew 25: 34-36

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me’ In the end, what does God look for to demonstrate saving faith? What we have done to help the helpless and be a voice for the voiceless. It reminds me again of what God said in Jeremiah 22.

Slide: ________________ Jeremiah 22:16

Is this not what it means to know me? All this messes me up, but the passage that messes me up maybe the most we haven’t looked at yet. And that’s in 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul is talking about economic disparity, between a geographic region that has more than enough and their responsibility for other geographies who do not have enough. Paul says this about our responsibility in a too much geography for the not enough geographies:

Slide: ________________ 2 Corinthians 8:13-15

13 Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. 14 At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, 15 as it is written: “He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.” Paul’s principle was that of equality. God gives me more than I need so that I can give to those who have too little. That is my responsibility. What breaks that down is when I don’t give…when I hoard instead of share. Imagine two people on an island under a tree, both praying for food. After they both pray, some bananas fall down from the tree onto the lap of one of them. Whose prayer did God answer? One or both? In Philippians 4 is a great passage that people love to quote. There Paul says,

Slide: ________________ Philippians 4:13 (NASB)

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” A great verse, but it is a statement with a certain context in mind. He’s not talking about an ability to do anything, lift up a 1000 pound boulder or something. He is talking about handling economic need. He explains what happened. God gave extra to the church in Philippi, but for some reason they did not give. As a result, Paul was in poverty. He says, “I can do all things through Christ,” whether in poverty or plenty. In his case, God gave him the grace to handle poverty because the church did not give. When one group gets too much, God expects that group to give to those who have too little. God will supply them to, but it may be grace to handle poverty. That is not God’s ideal, not what God expects of us who are the too much’s. Economic disparity is a biblical issue. Social justice matters deeply to God. He expects his people to demonstrate his heart and be a help for the helpless and a voice for the voiceless. He gives more to some so that we can give to the lack of others.

So, the Bible is clear. I can’t just put this social justice thing in the closet, maybe give it to some liberal church who cares about this kind of stuff. I can’t do that, not biblically. I would if I could, because it isn’t comfortable. Yet, with that in mind, let me mess us up some more…just as we look at what currently exists in the world as it relates to social justice, of issues of poverty and oppression. These are issues that we must care about because God does so deeply. I’m just going to share some of the statistics and realities that I discovered the last few months, and see if you don’t get as messed up as me:

·         Slide: ________________ 1.3 billion people live in abject poverty, on less than one dollar a day

·         Slide: ________________ 3 billion people are very poor, living on less than $2 a day (half the world pop.)

·         Slide: ________________ Of the 3 billion, children fare the worst. If children are malnourished in the first few years of life, their brains are irreparably malformed.

·         Slide: ________________ 30,000 children die every due to poverty, that’s one child every 3 seconds.

·         Slide: ________________ 2.2 million children die every year because they are not immunized

·         Slide: ________________ 15 million children are currently orphaned due to AIDS.

·         Slide: ________________ Currently, there are 27,000,000 slaves, more than the 4 centuries of trans-Atlantic slavery combined.

• 1.3 billion people live in abject poverty, on less than one dollar a day
• 3 billion people are very poor, living on less than $2 a day (half the world pop.)
• Of the 3 billion, children fare the worst. If children are malnourished in the first few years of life, their brains are irreparably malformed.
• 30,000 children die every due to poverty, that’s one child every 3 seconds.
• 2.2 million children die every year because they are not immunized
• 15 million children are currently orphaned due to AIDS (total child population in Germany).
• One tragic outcome of poverty is human trafficking. Desperate parents give their children away to people promising to give their children a better life. These are recruiters sent to enslave children for brothels or other forms of labor. Currently, there are 27,000,000 slaves, more than the 4 centuries of trans-atlantic slavery combined. Half of these slaves are children, 80% are girls. Around 90% of them are in sex-related industries. Most will die before they are in their early 20’s, which is no problem for the slave traders. Because of poverty, there is an unlimited supply of people. These are disposable people. It is estimated that there are 200,000 slaves in the United States alone. 900,000 children are added to slavery every year, around 13,000 more come each year to the United States.

These issues of poverty used to be more theoretical for me, but no longer. The poverty in Ethiopia is very real, and the most vulnerable are just wandering around the streets, nowhere to go. Does God care about all this? Now, let’s look at economic disparity, what God would call economic injustice, between the haves and have nots. Let’s mess ourselves up a little more:

Slide: ________________

·        20% of the world’s population consumes 86% of the world’s goods

Slide: ________________

·        0.13 percent of the world’s population controls 25% of the world’s assets.

Slide: ________________

·        John Maikowski’s stat

Slide: ________________

·        The top 500 wealthy people are wealthier than the bottom 3 billion combined.

Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998

Slide: ________________

Now consider the additional costs it would require to provide the following goals universally

Slide: ________________

Just to put this in perspective, one more statistic. In the day after Christmas sales of 2006, we Americans spent 9 billion dollars in stores that one day. I was one of them. I did my part. I bought a pair of jeans and a really cool blue shirt. I like that shirt. Great shirt. I joined in the frenzy as we spent the 9 billion. That 9 billion dollars we spent in one day at retail stores is what it would take to give the whole world clean water. I could have given up my shirt for that.

So, are you messed up yet? I hope so, because that way I won’t have to be so lonely in my messed-up-ness. I feel better. All this is more convenient in the closet, isn’t it? The real shame is that we as conservative Christians ever put it in there. How frustrating that must be to God. But for now at least, we have brought it out of the closet in the middle of the kitchen table. So, what do we do? The need is so huge. We are talking about billions of people, huge needs. What do we do with the tension, the disequilibrium that we are feeling?

I’m going to suggest two steps. These are not final solutions, but two important steps. The point of today is not just to be messed up, but to actually take some steps…to do something about justice…to honor God’s heart.

Slide: ________________

Live in the tension

(the messed-up-ness). I believe that between now and when Jesus comes back and restores ultimate justice, staying messed-up is godly. When God expresses frustration in the Bible about his people’s lack of caring in this area, his frustration is aimed at people who are complacent, who do not share his messed-up-ness.

It is hard to live that way, though. We fight for equilibrium; it is hard to live in disequilibrium. I have felt that since returning from Ethiopia. I’ve been in impoverished areas before in Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Latin America, Philippines, etc., but I’ve never experienced this kind of poverty, and I can’t shake it. I’ve tried. I’m trying to re-adjust, but I am struggling. One girl I met while over there was in 8th grade, the same grade as Collin. Her mother is a blind widow, and they are completely impoverished. And yet, she is in school. She and her mom beg on the streets and live in a leaky lean-to, but she is able to go. She was so bright and articulate; you could tell a brilliant person. She was so responsible, caring for her elderly mother with grace and strength. She wants to be a doctor, and she has all the drive and intelligence to do so, but her chances are about zero without help. I now know her, and I know how to find her. I know that a little money there goes a long way. How do I just walk away from that? I know there are millions in Ethiopia like them, but I can’t shake that one girl. Nor can I shake the overall experience.

The worst thing I could do is some token thing and lose my tension. The tension itself is godly. God lives in this tension, and he wants us to share it…to be bothered by it. To help us accomplish that, that’s why when you came in to the service today you were given a pebble. Keep the pebble in your pocket for now, but what I want you to do is place it in your shoe for two weeks. Today’s truth needs to be a pebble in our shoe, something that doesn’t paralyze us but that does bother us. We’ve all experienced something today. We have been informed, which is responsibility. Every time you feel the pebble, pray for God to show you his heart. Pray for justice. Pray for what all this means for you.

Slide: ________________

Take a generosity step

With the pebble in your shoe, take a generosity step. I know the needs are so big that you wonder how much a step really matters, but it certainly matters to the people who are helped and it certainly matters to God. 1 Timothy 6 is very helpful here, because there God speaks to those of us who are rich. And don’t look around at someone else when I say rich. You are rich. If you live on more than two dollars a day, you are wealthier than half the world. People in this room are way up at the top of the world’s wealthy, so this verse is for all of us. So, let’s listen to God in 1 Tim 6:17-19:

Slide: ________________ Command those who are rich in this present world to feel horrible about it. Tell them to quickly give away all that they have to the poor and repent from their previous enjoyment of anything they have ever spent money on. God hates rich people.

That’s not the real verse, thank God. But let’s be challenged by the real thing:

Slide: ________________ 1 Timothy 6:17

17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Stop there. One of the reasons God has provided us with resources is for enjoyment. So, do we have to feel guilty if we enjoy a meal or a round of golf (notice I am trying to make myself feel better here). No. We praise God for it. But God has not just given us money for our enjoyment, but to share with those who have too little. Paul goes on in v. 18:

Slide: ________________ 1 Tim 6:18-19

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. God gives us resources so that we can be generous, always on the lookout, always ready to share. And everything we give to God’s kingdom work through the church or to the poor in Jesus’ name, we will be eternally rewarded for. The troubling question is, “How much do I enjoy and how much do I share with others?” The Bible doesn’t tell us that, and that means that there is room for us all to answer that question a little differently. Yet, what we do know is that what frustrates God about the haves is when they are not generous with the have-nots. It isn’t that God hates us rich people. What he hates is when we who are rich over-consumer and under-care…when we hoard what he has given us with the expectation that we will share rather than give to the need. As God said to Abraham, his people are blessed to be a blessing—not just blessed to enjoy the blessing, but to be a blessing.

Generosity does mean that I take some of what I would have enjoyed myself and give it to someone else in need. That means that I choose a simpler life if I want to choose a generous life. I consume less and share more. As Americans, I’m not sure our big struggle is learning to enjoy our material blessings. We are great at that. But this simpler life thing, this generous living thing, we could certainly do better.

We’ve learned that in the Imagine campaign, and that has been great for our family. There are things we are not doing because we are giving to our church, and we will be forever grateful for that. Yet, this whole Ethiopia opportunity is giving us another opportunity to take it one more step. Let me get really specific. Christy and I were planning to buy a new TV for our bedroom. The one we have is 13 inches, and we were going to spend between 1 and 2 hundred dollars for one that is closer to 27 inches. Let’s call it $200. I now know what that money can do. That $200 is all it would take for that 8th grade girl I mentioned to be able to stay in school and care for her mom for a year. So, what’s better, the TV or the girl? We aren’t getting the TV. We are giving the money. Does that make me a hero? Are they going to erect a statue in Ethiopia of me watching a 13 inch TV, honoring my heroic generosity? No! And it wouldn’t necessarily be sinful to buy the TV. But I do have the opportunity to share, to choose to live more simply and be more free to be generous. We will do more than this, but this is one specific example.

Today we are asking you to pray about taking a generosity step for the world’s poor, to honor God in this way. Economic disparity is a Christian issue. Imagine if Christians were known to be people who not only stuck up for their own rights, but were known as those who advocated for the poor and voiceless…that Christians were the first people thought of when they thought of people doing something about social injustice. That’s the way it should be. That’s what God expects, yet I’m not sure we are there. But let’s take a step. This isn’t the final solution, but a great step.

As a church, God has put us in contact with one part of the world, northern Ethiopia, 27 million people, and only .013% know Christ. The needs are huge. Yet, we have the opportunity to help the poor in the best possible way, through faithful local churches right there in the communities. We get to give help to the helpless through the churches, which makes them the hero and not us. They are already serving the poor, but are so resourced challenged themselves they can’t do much. With our help, they can serve the poor and generate good will in the communities they are reaching. Today we are going to take up an offering.

Slide: ________________ show pledge card

In the seat backs in front of you are little pledge cards. Please take that out. You can write a check today, or put cash in this special offering we will take. Or you have the opportunity to pray about it. But I’d like us all to at least take the step of handing in the pledge card.

This past Tuesday night, our elders met to seek God’s guidance on this Ethiopia project. This is a multi-year partnership, but for this year, what could we call our church to. Keep in mind that this project is not so much ours, but more so a project that is a vision of local church leaders there in Ethiopia, very sharp leaders who are already doing the job. We just get the opportunity to come alongside them. Here are the priorities they had, and as elders we agreed to their priorities. So, this is what we hope to do this year through this offering:

Slide: ________________

o        Training the indigenous church planters        $17,000

Slide: ________________ Pic of man at map

Their first priority is training their church planters. Right now, the missionaries get 3 days of training, a Bible, and are sent on their way. They are faithful, but poorly trained. They have asked us to help, and they do have some trained leaders there who can help do the job. The 17,000 dollars would enable them to do a 6 month training program for 80 leaders, helping train their current church planters and send out about 55 more. It will also enable us to get the key leader there in Ethiopia over here to expose him to the church-based training work we have done and expose them to other models and resources to design a good strategy for there.

Slide: ________________

o        More missionaries                                          $12,000

Slide: ________________ Pic of three missionaries

This would mean supporting 10 new missionaries to start churches that spread the gospel and care for the poor in their communities. When I asked about how many potential church planters there are in their churches, they seemed confused. They said, “Everybody.” To them, following Christ means being a missionary.

Slide: ________________  

o        Social Needs                                                  $18,000

Slide: ________________ pic of widow and orphan

This money would be used by the churches to care for the poorest of the poor in Jesus’ name. One opportunity we would so as a church in particular is in the town of Gonder. It is a ministry to 50 widows, all of whom are destitute. They are treated with no dignity as they beg on the streets, sleep on the streets. One of those widows is the mother of the 8th grade girl. At this ministry, they have a clean place to go every day to be fed two meals, have coffee, get a shower, and be treated with grace and dignity. We were really moved by them, and I promised them that I would come back here and we would pray about how we can help…because in 6 more weeks they run out of money and will have to shut the whole thing down. The US donor is sick and can’t do it any more. 12,000 dollars would pay for the rent, the staffing, and the food for a year. God who cares for those widows would be thrilled. The other money would go to the churches to care for AIDS orphans, of which there are thousands and other vulnerable people. As I said, to care for an AIDS orphan, it takes about 9 dollars month, to feed them and send them to school. If they are not helped, most will die. Those helped will have a future…and we get to care for needs through these churches, which is way cool.

Slide: ________________

o        Micro-enterprise                                             $10,000

Slide: ________________ pic of cattle on hillside

Our ultimate goal over the next 5 years is for this effort to be self-sustaining. The group that connected us to this project, Bright Hope World, is big in micro-lending and micro-enterprise as a way to avoid making people dependent on us but to give them the ability to make a living and fund their vision. Starting this year, they are starting a cattle farm that would generate enough money to care for the ministry needs in one part of northwest Ethiopia. This 10,000 dollars is actually a loan to be paid out over three years from the proceeds. This is important to understand, because we aren’t just dumping money. We are working to give them the dignity of making a living and funding their ministries.

So, let’s take a step. Over these next few years, we have the opportunity to make a huge difference in one part of the world. Today we will decide how much we will do, and we are going to do it in a way that we will likely never forget. Earlier I mentioned not putting the pebble in your shoe right now, and here is why. I’d like you to consider giving your pledge or check inside your shoes and giving your shoes today, too…those you have on your feet. Partially, this is because there are people who need shoes and we are giving them to some organizations who will get them to the people in need. But the other part of it is symbolic, as we who give our shoes go home in socks or bare feet…to remember what God is saying to us today. I know that some of you have plans after the service or others of you may be new in our church and are like, “You want my shoes?” or  some of you just aren’t there yet…and that’s all okay. Probably all of us are thinking, “Shoot, why didn’t I know about this so I could wear some cruddy shoes.” You don’t have to, but consider doing so. Please don’t not give a pledge card though. At the doors as you leave, you have the opportunity to lay down your shoes with the card or check or cash in them. There are also big baskets there, and you can just place the gift or card in there if you are unable to leave your shoes today.

Then, when you do get home, remember to put the pebble in your shoes…or if you are leaving your shoes on, go ahead and put the pebble in now. Keep it in their two weeks, as a way of staying bothered.

What I can promise is that God will be pleased with whatever we do. Of what we have, deciding what to enjoy and what to give away, is a constant struggle…let’s stay in that struggle though and be generous…let’s be mature enough to let different people work that balance out differently…but let’s take the responsibility to take the steps God wants us to take.

Let’s pray.