Do
You Consider the Weak? If you want blessings, you must!
By Kelly Durant
Ps
41:1-3
Blessed
is he who has regard for the weak;
the
LORD delivers him in times of trouble.
2
The LORD will protect him and preserve his life;
he
will bless him in the land
and
not surrender him to the desire of his foes.
3
The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed
and
restore him from his bed of illness.
1.
How many of you know that the Salvation Amy helps 30 million people in the USA
per year? That is one person out of every 10! (See stats) We are saved to save and to serve with
compassion the needy! You need to always be ready to help anyone as God will
put you & I in situations in which we must respond to the needs of others! We
are in the compassion business!
2. We have always had our appreciation dinners
to thank all of you who help but what matters most is not public recognition
but how Jesus appreciates all of what you do! If you have been a part of
impacting the lives of the elderly, of children, and everyone for Jesus then He
knows! And you now, are you ready to help? Someone who is weak and in need may
need you today!
I could tell you many sad stories from
people I have met in my recent past of compassion. Often you don’t expect it,
but the Lord puts you and I there by people so He can use us to open up our
heart of compassion. Can you tell me a few stories of how you have helped
someone? We should all share our testimonies! You might realize how blessed you
are protected and in good health!
3.
Prayer for people is worth more than anything! All Christians must encourage someone
when someone is weak, sad, poor, discouraged, hurt or down in any way!
One
time I met a mother in the park who explained that her house got burned down
last week and she lost everything she owned! And to make matters worse her
husband was burned on over 90% of his body and he was in the hospital in
serious condition! I was thankful the Salvation Army had a way for me to help
them through the social services! We paid 3 months’ rent and she had no
government help either! That really helped her!
People cross our paths all the time with needs
but serious pain really does make cry and pray! Another young mother one time
during the kids soccer game, not knowing we could help her, started to tell me
that her husband had been killed in a car wreck by a drunk driver last week.
She was 22 years old and she was doing the best she could to survive with her
two small children! Imagine, no job, no papers, a deceased soul mate, and no other
family to help you!
There must be times when you just need to stop
and pray for people! How cold it would be to just watch them wipe tears from
their eyes and you not be moved with compassion! You and I know that our
comfort comes from God and the Holy Spirit; and just as Jesus drew strength
from his Father, you and I must draw strength from God and his promises too!
4. Our mission, as Christians and in
particular, as member of this Salvation Army Corps is to win souls for Jesus
Christ and we do that by compassion or doing tangible deeds proving our love
for God and our love for our neighbor as ourselves! In other words, God works
through us showing compassion on the weak! The word “Christian” should be
synonymous to the word “compassion”! Clearly hard-hearted uncompassionate people
are the enemies of Christians and there are even some of them in most churches!
The
people who come to the Corps to hear the word God and then do not practice love
and compassion in their personal lives by being a servant to help others do not
stay long as members in our Corps. We focus on salvation, compassion, mercy,
service and love! And over time people either get it understand it and start
practicing it, or they get embarrassed by the word of God exposing their own selfishness
and they run away from obeying God’s ways!
5. We, TSA, are unique and not in competition
with any other church; and history speaks of all the heroic deeds of compassion!
There are too many people in the world that prefer churches where they will not
be asked to do anything. How comfortable!
Many people prefer bigger and richer churches than ours, with mega
praise bands for their entertainment, but what we offer here is simply an opportunity
for anyone who comes to serve others and express their love and faith, and
compassion, for the weak and needy!
Church will always disillusion you if it
is taken as a place where you should get your needs supplied. Church, as it was
for the disciples, is any place, anytime; a moment to be with Jesus hearing His
word, but then you put it into action in the streets to showing the love and
compassion you have learned!
Most
churches serve their own people, there is nothing wrong with that, but there
have been hundreds of times people have commented to me that their own church
could not help them in a crisis, which is why they came to The Salvation Army,
and we help them! What a great record right? Who do you call when someone is
weak and down?
6. Some people know about our help but do not
know about the Salvation Army as a church and that is why it is so important
that you spread the word to everyone that you have the best support out there that
practices their faith by helping others like Jesus did! Each of us needs to be
inviting friends and getting others on board with the method of Jesus which is
love and compassion shown on the weak! God’s plan for millennia is to help the
needy ones!
Deut
15:11
11
For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee,
saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to
thy needy, in thy land.
But remember many of God’s promises in
the O.T. have an, if clause, in other
words God will do many things for you and bless you but he puts on it
requirements with His promise.
Zech
3:6-7
6
The angel of the LORD gave this charge to Joshua:7 "This is what the LORD
Almighty says: 'If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you
will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place
among these standing here.
The
requirement here for Joshua, and for all Christians, is to walk in God’s ways
if we want to have a place of authority to govern, a place where you are worthy
to serve. Many of you govern well in this Corps and it is a practice for how
you may rule as princes and princesses in heaven!
Looking
at our verses of today in Psa 41 it says:
Blessed
is he who has regard for the weak;
the
LORD delivers him in times of trouble.
2
The LORD will protect him and preserve his life;
he
will bless him in the land
and
not surrender him to the desire of his foes.
7. In
these verses God states through David that He will bless you take care of you
and me and protect you and I, and deliver you and I from trouble, from those
who wish to harm us but notice how God’s promises work. God can protect our
health, avoid problems with the law, and bless us. But God’s blessings have
implications and requirements. He blesses his children but like with a
contract, He expects you and I to fulfill your part in following His ways and
doing His work.
In this case, if you are Christian who has
a heart to help those who are weak, those in need and you do it as often as you
can, if you are practicing helping others who are poor or weak, then God will
use you as His own child, because God has no other hands but yours, no other
feet to go to help the needy but yours, and you will be blessed! You will be
protected, delivered, preserved, and blessed in the land! I consider that I
have been blessed all my life!
8. But what does it mean for those who hear
God’s word and they do not regard the weak and they remain selfish or always
busy when we need help? What about those who have obtained help but still they
do not help others? Those who hear God’s word and never practice it?
This verse empirically implies that this
type of non-participant person will be treated with the absence of the promise.
They will not be protected from having troubled times, they will not be blessed
in the land and they may fall into the trap of those who wish them harm!
How
terrible is that! To think that you are like time bomb and at any moment the
judgments of God are going to fall on you because you are not practicing His
ways of compassion on the weak! I have seen it hundreds of times. People who
stubbornly remain far away from God and they punish their own selves by
receiving goodness from God with no appreciation.
9. You and I have already seen blessings and
bad consequences happen over and over to people depending on how these people have
reacted to God’s love! In the Salvation Army I have become accustomed to seeing
about one thousand people come through our doors year after year asking for
help; and we pray with them, and tell them, ‘We love you, come and seek God!’,
but when they don’t then some time later they almost always come back for more
help in an even worse situation! But there are the ones who obey God and get blessed
by our help and then they give help and then keep on getting blessed because
they are in God’s will!
It is a simple as this; God makes it
clear, you will walk in His ways of compassion for others, helping the needy,
or simply He will not be with you and bless you!
10. Prov
19:17
17
He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath
given will he pay him again.
Prov
21:13
13
Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but
shall not be heard.
Are you willing to increase your faith
today to practice helping the weak and the poor more and seek ways to help
others around you so they will see your good works and glorify God in heaven?
Help implies not just giving food, it implies spiritual encouraging that costs
you hours of preparation and spiritually feeding dedicated to those around you
in your part of the world! It costs to give! Even someone sitting right here in
the church right beside you may need you!
Each person must be interested in the
well-being of his brother and sister! God comforts us why, to be comfortable
and blessed? No, there is another reason. Look here:
11. 2 Cor 1:4
4
Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which
are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
Ask yourself, when was the last time I
comforted someone suffering? Someone weak, how long has it been since I did
something generous for someone in need, for someone in a weak painful moment in
time?
Come forward and confess it if you feel
guilty for not doing all you can to love your neighbor as yourself and ask God
to help you help the weak so in your time of weakness and poverty, God and the
true Christians with compassion will be there to help you too!
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