I was naked and you clothed Me

How time seems to fly around the holidays. It would seem that I have missed a couple of weeks of posting.  I can’t give you a specific success story this week but I can tell you that the last couple of weeks I have been more aware of the people around me and have tried to watch for new faces at church and make them feel welcome. It is always amazing to me how easy it is to get into our own little rut and forget to reach out to people we meet each day.  We have talked about this in our Saturday men’s group, how easy it is to hit the garage door opener pull into the garage and close the door and never need to deal with our neighbors. Point being touch peoples lives!

Challenge #4:

I was naked and you clothed Me.

I am not sure about you but I typically do not see a lot of naked people in my daily activities.  What I do know is that as Tina and I prepare to sell the house and down size we have hauled countless bags of clothing from our over-stuffed closet to Savers or Goodwill making it once again hard to imagine that there are people that do not have enough.  So as you go through your week take a look in your closet and see what there is that is just like new that you really don’t need ad pass it on to someone else, and again if you are in our church look up Ken Dean and see what he can use for winter coats in the ministry that he is involved in.  Chose to be aware of this need so that you will be able to bless others when the need arises!

I was a stranger and you took Me in

Kind of a tough one, where do we encounter people that are thirsty? Saturday Morning, Tina and I went to Caribou coffee and anonymously purchased coffee for several people. It was great to just watch faces of people as they received their “Free Coffee.”

Challenge #3:

I was a stranger and you took Me in

They don’t get any easier.

I think that most times when we read this passage we think of the homeless. Homeless World Cup reports that in 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights estimated there are 100 Million homeless people worldwide. They also report, by 2015 there will be 24.4 million in Nigeria alone. The estimated homeless figures in the United States range from 600,000 to 2.5 million. Either way- this is a lot of people that have no place to go.

This week I would like to propose that you look at this a little differently. Look around you for strangersin  the places that you go to. How about in church next Sunday? Make them feel welcome and at home. Do you think that this week you can find a stranger and “take them in?”

I was thirsty and you gave Me drink

Humm, No comments, did no one take on this challenge? Each day, 18,000 children die from hunger-related causes.

We took  our entire office to Feed my Starving Children (FMSC) this week, we packed almost 10,000 meals in the  2 hours that we were there.  In 2012, FMSC passed a milestone: 600 million meals produced over our history.

On to challenge number 2, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink.

The Water Project says that there are 800 million people have no access to safe drinking water. Give a Drop says that 2,000,000 people die each year from water related illness. So those are some really, really big numbers especially when we sit in our homes with such easy access to clean water. I know in our house we have no less than 10 spigots that I could go to and fill a glass and not even think twice about it. That does not take into consideration that we may have bottled water of a few varieties and flavors in our fridge, which in itself boggles my mind, but that is a completely different topic. With all of this so very far away from touching our lives it becomes very hard to grasp how big of an issue this is, how do I begin to understand that 4 people die every minute because they have bad water when I sit here with my fresh brewed cup of coffee with fresh water right out of the faucet?

So this week your challenge is to become involved some way in giving people a drink. This may be a little more challenging to make this a going opportunity. You may want to take this outside of the literal interpretation of this challenge. Our lives are certainly filled with people that are spiritually thirsty. Look for that person that is thirsty for love or encouragement or ??? You have the ability to quench their thirst. So go, and give a drink in Jesus name.