Helping the poor.
Recently I've taken on a new book called "The Poor Will Be Glad"
by Phil Smith and Peter Greer.
Wow.
What a wake call. I think many times in my past I've thought about how I could personally help the poor and why I should.
The environment that I've been in that "helps the poor" has given me guilt, conviction, and so on.
So many of us view that helping the poor means giving loads of money, donating clothing food, or even short-term mission trips.
Now you are thinking don't we all feel guilty about this?
I had this mind set that helping the poor required myself to take on a huge role in going on a missions trip to some developing country to build hospitals, schools and etc.
To tell you the truth I have never been on a missions trip before. Not even in the states!
Shocking to you? Maybe not.
Like I said my environment is very convicting.
This book "The Poor Will Be Glad" has opened my eyes for numerous reasons:
- The definition of helping the poor is extremely misunderstood.
- I shouldn't "help the poor" to get a clear conscience.
- Evangelism is vital to this call.
- People need to not just help the poor, but help the poor help themselves.
In my parents prime they were missionaries in The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa.
I grew up knowing how important sharing God's grace and love was... Or so I thought.
After many years and reading most of this book I have come to realize helping the poor requires SO MUCH MORE than just making their lives more stable.
That's point number 1 for me.
It's seems so simple, but it rings truth.
When we send money to sponsor children each month, donate items across, seas, or even go over to developing countries ourselves, we may be doing damage instead of good.
How do we minister to those who need it just as much as they need food and shelter?
Microfinance.
I definitely cannot go into great detail, but I encourage you to research more about this amazing start of helping the poor help themselves!
Smith and Greer define Microfinance loans as this-
Three ladies meet up every week bringing $3 with them each time. They draw a name of a one of them and that person gets to borrow the total of $9 that week.
It gets much more complicated than this, but the loans get get higher with a surprisingly high return rate of the borrowed money!
Brilliant isn't it?
This was a short summary of what I've been thinking about and praying for. It's something not to feel guilty or upset about, but excited that by different associations and ideas you can be a part of.
I will update more on this. As you can see There is still much more to cover.
Pray, Think, Learn about how you can be a part of helping the poor become glad.
