Make Poverty Personal by Ash Barker

I have already blogged about this book, Make Poverty Personal by Ash Barker (see The Kingdom of Needle Eyes and  We Have Been Told to Go!), so I won't belabor the point...except to say this:

Through books such as this and many others that God has strategically placed in my path, I have come to the realization that I cannot honestly say I love Jesus and want to be more like Him, unless I am willing to give up everything and stand side-by-side with the Poor..."the least of these".  Don't get angry with me if you don't agree, I'm not the One who first said it.

I no longer can placate my "white man's guilt" by giving away items to Goodwill (which doesn't help the Poor anyway, but that's another vendetta altogether!), sponsoring a child in a developing country, paying a tithe to my church and maybe volunteering a few times a year. Jesus calls all believers to a total life transformation...not just a select few. If my life and attitude toward the Poor (yes, even the ones that think they're entitled!) is no different than my non-Christian counterparts, then how dare I have the audacity to claim Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

Can you sense how I have been challenged by this book? You need to know though that I am presenting this much more harshly than Ash Barker does. I am just fed up with myself and it's coming out in this post.

There is a theme that is running through current Christian literature these days. The books that have changed my life forever have all been written in the last four to five years. Crazy Love, Forgotten God, A Thousand Miles in a Million Years, (from which this blog receives its title) A Hole in Our Gospel, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day, Radical, and Passport Through Darkness...plus the older Irresistible Revolution and thousands of blog posts by authors such as Ann Voscamp, Beth Moore and others less famous are ALL crying out for us to let go of this non-existent "American Dream" and become the people of God that He created us to be. If you have one ounce of perspective, discernment, intuition or analytical aptitude...you can only acknowledge that God's Holy Spirit is moving and working and calling us to follow Him into establishing His kingdom "on earth as it is in Heaven".

While chewing on all of this over the last few weeks, I recalled a conversation with a lady I went to church with in Indy. At one point my exuberance over what I wanted to do in service to God was bubbling over and I said something like, "I just don't want to miss out on being a part of what He is doing." She replied, "And that's why you won't." I know the Holy Spirit wasn't chastising me because my life now looks nothing like what I thought it would then. Rather, He was reminding me that if I still long to not "miss out", I need to follow wherever He leads...that is where my real life will begin.