Interesting post from Help the Hawaii Homeless.org

[dkf]

http://thehawaiihomeless.org/blog.html

Saturday, 16 April 2011 11:00
I was chatting with a homeless neighbor this past Monday night during one of my visits to Waikiki.  I wanted to know about how they really felt about churches and their weekly outreaches.  I was surprised by what he said.

In a few words, this young man said, "Its nice to get fed and have a full stomach. But that's only temporary."  He further explained, "After they are done, they are gone.  They don't talk to you. They do their thing and go home."  And then he said something about me, "They talk about Jesus, but you actually go and do what he did.  You do both."

I didn't mention this to get any kind of pat on the back.  But I want to share a sobering reality about the patterns our churches have set.  Could it be that there are some chronically homeless that are there because they are waiting to be loved on?  AND that they are looking for Jesus in those who claim to be believers?

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That explains a lot about our struggles starting up. (About teaching his people...)  Although we are a faith based organization, many of the Christians that I looked up to, admired their walk and felt honored by their friendship, were the very ones that didn't want to help.  Churches have told me they don't want to be associated with flying the homeless home, or they are focused on other things, or that they have many missions they committed to already and the worst one, "I don't feel called to do that."

True.  God is not going to force anyone to help the poor.  And I have also been told that "we will always have the poor."  Again, true! But, Jesus stopped everything to heal and forgive them anyway.  So, if we took the time to love someone that may/may never get saved or healed it is an "expensive" thing to do, huh?  Kind of like, pouring perfume on Jesus' feet? (I wrote a blog about that one too.)

Probably the worst habit is "tipping" Jesus.  One pastor told me, "Do we have to go there?  Couldn't we just pay someone else to do it?" Money IS great! But God wants us to surrender everything, not just our money.  Money doesn't embody his Spirit.  We do.