ExodusPodcasts.com

This last Wednesday night, we started discussing the book Irresistible Revolution and the subject of service came up.  Specifically we began talking about our interactions (or lack thereof) with the poor and homeless.  Everyone in our group agreed that it is a command of God for us to take care of the needy, which definitely includes the poor and homeless.  We had different opinions of what that service or “taking care of” actually looked like.

One position was that we have a responsibility to directly and physically be serving the poor in close proximity at least to a small degree.  The other position was that the desired service and “taking care of” might be accomplished better or more effectively through monetary support of organizations or others who are already established and working to accomplish the same goals.  Both perspectives acknowledge the benefit or direct support and indirect support, but the question came up of where does the balance fall.

The issue of our heart being willing to serve directly is important, because we all agreed on that.  The question became: is it acceptable to simply give money if our heart is right and we are willing to serve directly if/when it comes up?  Are we commanded to pursue opportunities where we are in direct service?

This is a conversation that briefly came up during our social justice series and it was an interesting discussion, so I am curious what anyone else’s thoughts are on the subject.

A few weeks ago during our Wednesday night series on Lamentations, the concept of cursing our enemies during prayer came up.  It seemed as if there are multiple places in the Bible where people call on God to be wrathful towards the speaker’s enemies.  This creates a potential problem with other teachings of the Bible to love our enemies.  As I was recently encouraged to investigate this more, I came across one persepctive that I wanted to see other people’s opinions of.   God has the right to curse people and be vengeful towards them because he is God.  We, on the other hand, do not have that right.  The potential way to merge these ideas is that the speaker is actually speaking a curse from God.  I thought this idea was interesting, but I am not sure how justified it is.  Share your thoughts.

On Sunday, we talked about Revelation and a big theme that Jon kept coming to was the idea that we should apply this to our lives.  It is common to view Revelation as simply a book predicting future events (or past events depending on your view I guess).  I know that it is hard for me to see how I should live my life differently based on Revelation.  My perception was that a primary way in which we can apply what is written is for us to be even more active in our following of Christ.  I’m not sure exactly what that looks like or if it is even the best application of what we studied.  I am curious what all of your thoughts are on the idea.