Do you have what it takes?

Or does what it takes have you!

There is nothing quite so disheartening as seeing a missionary not being able to return to the field due to lack of funds or to return to the field due to lack of funds or to see a young missionary so discouraged because he can’t raise the funds in order to get there.

Francis Schaeffer, the modern day evangelical theologian, says that the thing that characterizes this generation is PERSONAL PEACE and AFFLUENCE.  

Personal peace because we just want to be left alone.  We don’t want anything to disturb our “hard  earned” comfortable lifestyle.  Affluence because we have so much yet share so little of what we have.

Regardless of what the economy is doing or how bad the recession is, we are still the most affluent nation on earth.

There is no reason on earth why every church in the United States could not support just one more missionary.  Why every Christian in the United States couldn’t give just a little more to support missions.  You know, God judged Sodom and Gommorah on the basis far different from what we think.  He didn’t judge them solely for their immorality.  In Ezekial 16:47-52 we read that he pronounced judgment on them because: 

1.        They had pride.            

2.        They had surfeit of food (or overabundance) of food, which they did not share.               

3.   They lived in prosperous ease. 

4.  They did not aid the poor and needy.  

Based on this, I am quite certain that if God doesn’t judge us for the same thing, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.  I say this not in jest, but in awesome respect for who He, the Almighty God, is.

I recently read a quote that went like this,  “If you are living the same life or better than those around you, you are probably not giving enough”.   As we look around, it becomes quite obvious that we have far more than we need.  Everything from the new vehicles we could probably do without to the deepfreeze that is so full that we have to get a second one.    Come on now, are really any different than Sodom and Gomorrah.