As quoted from this book: “To say in effect, ‘ I love you so much and am so concerned about you that I want to give you the words of eternal life, but I don’t care enough to address your basic and pressing physical need’…in other words, giving a spiritual blessing without meeting an urgent physical need profits no one, especially the one on the receiving end.”

How many times do we give lip service to our Gospel presentation?  How many times do we think we are too busy to stop and help someone, or give a homeless person our change?  But we pause to consider the drugs, alcohol or other ways in which they will use it, so we don’t do it.  I am guilty of it…I am a perfectionist at the “stare-straight-ahead-don’t-blink-or-they’ll-know-your’re-still-alive” look.  How callous am I?  Why do I wish to preach a word to someone, yet not meet them where they are?  Some of these people we encounter are living in a trap of bad decisions by their parents, their friends or their business partners.  But we also know that many of them, probably most of them, are in their situation due to a string of poor decisions or poor answers to questions in their lives.  When someone is dying for a hit of cocaine, they could care less about what we have to say.  To stop our life, wrap them up in a blanket, feed them, and then tell them that Jesus loves them.  That might allow their spiritual self a fighting chance to see what we are trying to offer them in the Gospel message.

I was reading 10 Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald Whitney when I wrote this post.

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