Transcript
I love these words. These are the kinds of words from the Bible that get me up in the morning and make me willing and able to face my day. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear." You see, here's the theology of humanity that's revealed in scripture. When God created us, He didn't create us as independent, self-sufficient human beings. There's no human being that is independent. There's no human being that's self-sufficient. No one.
We Were Never Made to Be Independent
In fact, if you go back to the Garden of Eden, to Adam and Eve, even though they were perfect people living in a perfect world, living in perfect relationship with God, they weren't independent. I mean, immediately upon creating them, God comes to the garden and talks to them because they're needy. They don't actually know who they are. They don't actually know what their life is about. They don't actually know what they're supposed to be doing. They need help. Perfect people in a perfect world and they still need help.
Every human being needs help and the people around you need help. And I want to give you this process that responding to the physical help that people need can be a gateway in being used of God to get at the spiritual help that they don't know they need.
I had a friend tell me this awesome story of a neighbor who hated him, who was mean to him in every way he could be. All the time complaining where he parked his car, just constant criticism and complaints. And he said, "I have to admit I wanted to avoid this guy because I just didn't like being around him."
Raking a Neighbor's Leaves
But he went out one day and his neighbor had more of a wooded yard than he did and it was fall, and he was buried in leaves. And the thought came into this guy, "I want to go help him rake his leaves." He walked over there and he says, "I walked toward this guy. I saw him tense up because he thought I was going to confront him." And I said, "You look like you need help. Can I help you rake your leaves?" And the guy said, "Well, you don't have to do that." He said, "No, I don't. I just want to help you rake your leaves."
Most of that Saturday, he spent raking these leaves of this man who had mistreated him. And by the end of the day, that man was softer and said, "I don't know why you've done this for me." And he said, "I can tell you, I think it's what God wants me to do," said goodbye to him and left.
That man started, instead of yelling at him, started greeting him, started coming over to talk and before long, guess what? This mean man had begun to open his heart and talk about the trouble in his life, the breakdown of his marriage, his anger at his children. All the sudden, the willingness to give physical help was opening a doorway to give spiritual help that this man needed.
Raking Leaves Can Be an Act of Evangelism
Listen, raking leaves can be an act of evangelism. Helping that older woman carry her groceries into her house can be an act of spiritual rescue. Getting together with some other people and rescuing that park that's been disheveled, organizing that and packing lunches for everybody can be an act of spiritual rescue.
God will expose the physical needs of your neighbors to you so that through you, He can meet their spiritual needs. Now, what a plan! Human beings aren't independent. They're not independent of one another, not independent of God; and God will reveal physical need to you so that you can become His tool of getting that spiritual need that people don't even know they have. Now, what a plan! How about being part of that plan?
