First world problems really aren’t problems at all when considered from a third world perspective. If your household income is over $34k/year you are in the top 1% of income earners in the world.
Wally Lamb wrote, “I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.” My wife, Tracy, and I often discuss serious issues we help people walk through and say, "we don't have problems."
Jesus is alive!!! Because Jesus is alive the world is a better place! We are alive in Christ! The more we become like Jesus the more we make the world a better place!
Rom 8:18-19 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. NIV
Vs 18 speaks of a healthy comparison that then leads into a greater revelation of God’s people transforming the world.
A healthy comparison helps us keep the right perspective.
Wally Lamb, “I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met man had no feet.”
Making the most of your life doesn’t make other people’s pain go away but making other people’s pain go away does make the most of your life.
Your children will not learn the generous nature of God from their buddies. You are going to have to lead them in this. God has always included sacrificial giving as part of worship. God asks us to make sacrificial efforts to gather regularly expressing our understanding that life is not merely about our personal ambitions and desires.
We should include our children in conversations about our giving to expand God’s work and further God’s kingdom in the earth. Destiny emailed the newest member of the Agape family last week to all of our members. Little Aliya was rescued off streets of China and is now in one of the orphanages we support. Her brief life has already been filled with unimaginable suffering and rejection yet today there is hope for her because we give!
This Summer Tracy and I are going to focus with our girls taking one week to work and earn money for the sole purpose of giving to our Summer food ministry. Families who qualify for free lunches during the school year suffer hunger during the Summer time. We want to do something about that.
During these six weeks we want to purpose a day to eat at least one meal that resembles what people eat in Chad every day of their lives. The focus is primarily beans and rice. You’ll have to decide if this is one meal, two or a day. If you don’t come to the point of complaining then you’re probably not coming to the point of comparing. The idea is to enter in to the suffering of other people so we can pray for them and care for others more effectively.
GP4RL: Purpose a meal of beans and rice. Pray before the meal giving thanks and again after the meal for people in need.
You are designed by God to happen to your world. Jesus is alive and He desires to awaken you to the greater purposes of God.
If you don't devote yourself to the greater purposes of LOVE you confine yourself to self-serving existence. You were born for more than that!
The greatest tragedy of distraction is the life you never live and the difference you never make in the lives of other people.