Sing Their Sorrow

How would you approach the man standing in line, waiting to purchase diapers and baby food with a high interest credit card? He's standing there wondering if what he has in his hands will put him over the credit limit and if he can make the minimum card payment next month because he lost his job. Tensions are high at home. He just had an argument with his wife before leaving for the store. She shouted "I WANT A DIVORCE!" during the argument. Do you tell him, "Jesus has a wonderful plan for your life?" Do you hand him some fake money gospel tract and tell him he's a thief, liar, and murderous adulterer and there's no place for him in the Kingdom of Heaven?

Under the rule of Idi Amin in Uganda the persecution of the western church proved quite bloody. Back in England a missionary society wrote to a clergyman in Uganda "What can we send your people?" It was not the expected request of food or medicine that came back to England. Instead, the clergyman asked for 250 clerical collars, stating: "It is your Western prejudice which thinks this an odd request. You must understand, when our people are being rounded up to be shot, they must be able to spot their priests."

In our charitable moments we rush to those in need. Our problem is we've prepared for charity in a vacuum. How do we meet their needs when we don't know what their needs are. The love of the gospel and Christ for those created in his image has extended out to many people in many ways over the years. Jesus and the testimony he carried met people where they were. It's easy to see from scripture that life is all about relationships; first with God, then with his children.

Charity = love = relationships = relate

"We must recognize the different types of persons, and we must learn to discriminate between them. There is nothing so pathetic or so unscriptural as a mechanical way of testifying to others. There are some Christians who are guilty of that. They witness and testify, but they do it in a thoroughly mechanical way. They never really consider the person with whom they are dealing; they never try to assess the person, or to discover exactly what his position is. They fail completely to implement this exhortation. they present the truth in exactly the same way to all and sundry. Quite apart from the fact their testifying is generally quite useless, and that the only thing they achieve is a great feeling of self-righteousness, it is utterly unscriptural." ~D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Vol. 2, 187