Iglesia Paz

If you ever get to take a mission trip to Iglesia Paz in Juarez, Mx, pictures like this will break your heart. These people live in unsanitary conditions in homes made of cardboard and fork-lift slats. The desease, the squalor, the bugs, the stench, the rotten food and the prized garbage possessions will bring tears to your eyes. And yet, they don’t know how bad it is, in some cases. Why not? Because everyone around them lives that way. They have never really been given a picture of what it means to be a genuinely healthy human being. They don’t know what abundance looks, smells, and feels like.

That’s our problem too. It's the reason we think of ourselves as largely innocent people—people who have little to do with bringing about the Cross of Christ. We don't get how sick and undeveloped we are spiritually. In Psalm 14, David says that the one fully-healthy Being in the universe views the human race as we might view those Quechua villagers—only the gap between his life and that of our village is so much larger. "The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. But all have turned aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one." In other words, we are condemned, and we don't even know it. The reason we are disobedient is that we sometimes do not really understand just how desperately wicked we are. You see, the power of obedience will be released in your life when you come to truly fear God, when you see yourself the way he does, and