Love the One You are With

I sometimes read individuals who question whether it is important or even necessary to be very concerned about the physical conditions of the people you are sharing the gospel with or whom you are discipling.And I have to admit, I sometimes have a very hard time even processing that.Because as I read those kinds of discussions, I am thinking about sitting in a tin shack with a forty or fifty something year old man with a pretty obvious physical disability and a couple of serious diseases, watching his two children play in the dirt as his wife lays on the bed inside recovering from a recent bout of tuberculosis.He's not really here in South Africa by choice. His country is ruled by a selfish dictator whose foolish decisions have sent the country into an economic melt down, making surviving almost impossible, especially for many of those who were already poor.He's been doing everything he can to find work, but it is difficult being a foreigner, it is difficult being sick, it is difficult only have asylum seeker papers. By difficult, I mean almost impossible. For one thing, you have to figure out where to find work. For another, you have to figure out how to look for work and actually apply for a job. These things are different in different countries, believe it or not. For another, there's already a very high unemployment rate which means you are competing for jobs with many, many other nationals. For another, to look for work you have to pay for the taxi and to pay for the taxi you have to use the little money you have saved for food. For another, the man's sick and obviously feeble. For another, there can be real prejudice against foreigners. For another, if you try to start your own business and he's done this over and over, you have to follow the laws of the country in which you are in, and yet in South Africa finding out those laws and actually following through on the requirements is very difficult, especially if you don't want to offer any kind of bribes or take any kinds of shortcuts.And you know I am talking with him about the gospel because I know in the middle of the difficulties of his life the grace of Jesus Christ is his only ultimate solution; because I know that I am not His messiah and I can't be His messiah, but I know that Jesus is the only means of salvation for him and his family and because I know that all of this suffering that this man is experiencing could be a demonstration of God's grace if God uses it to show this man his sin and enable him to come to know the Savior and experience the glories of an eternity with Him.But you know what else? I am also thinking about the fact that this man has two children, that God's given him gifts to use, that as the leader of his home he needs to work and for the long term good of his family he needs to be able to find ways to provide and so I am thinking about how I can help him find some kind of employment or at least look for it himself and how I can help his family survive in the meantime. Why? Social gospel? No. Because I love him. Not perfectly. I wish. But I do. And I am thinking what I would need if I were sitting in his place.Or it's another day and this time I am visiting the place where one of the young men from our church stays. I am actually sitting on his bed, because he's staying in a room with four other guys in a flat that must contain about fifteen to twenty other people.We are talking about pursuing holiness and loving God and what it means to follow after Christ, and I glance over to my right where I see a curtain hanging over a glass window and I notice through a crack in the curtain all kinds of luggage in a spot that almost looks like a sun room or something like that in flat and I ask who stays in there and he tells me that where four prostitutes spend their time when they are not at work.And I am thinking to myself, how do I disciple a man who is living in this particular condition? I ask him why he chose this flat, and he tells me that he actually didn't. When he went looking for a place to stay, the owner showed him a different spot, then took his deposit and put him here. When he complained, he told him he could go but he wouldn't be seeing his deposit again.The good thing he does have a job. Security guard. He works six days a week, 12 hours a day, makes a little less than three hundred dollars a month. When they pay him. And they often don't.Or I am thinking of yet another day where I am way out in a township in the home of a pastor I have recently met. We've just come back from going door to door sharing the gospel with a number of the people in his town. I am particularly touched by a visit I had with a blind old crippled man who is left by himself in a one room hut. We found him lying on his bed. He sits up, water is dripping from his eyes, he's staring into the middle of nowhere, muttering things to himself. I see a wheelchair by the bed, but he's so weak now that he's unable to use it. And yet there he lays, left to die.The pastor and I are eating an African burger he's kindly prepared. Bread with french fries in the middle and some other spicy, crunchy things. I am not sure what they are and I am not really ready to ask. I just eat and look around. The roof is full of holes and I can hear the wind whipping against the metal over and over again. The pastor's trying. He's been trained at a great seminary, he's left his former charismatic church, he's committed himself to teaching the word, his congregation is growing, but they are seventy percent, maybe eighty, maybe ninety even unemployed. And that means the pastor and his family, often don't have enough to eat. They don't have the money to pay for school uniforms which means that their children sometimes get sent home from school. He often doesn't have the money even to take the taxi himself to town which means he doesn't have the money to come up to Pretoria very often to visit me or get to know other pastors who might be able to help. And you know what, here's the thing, he's one of many. So yeah, I could sit in my church and look at my people and think, well I don't have to worry about the others out there, but no, I really can't. I am not content with that. I am not Jesus. I am not in charge of fixing the world's problems. But I know these people now. I love these people now. And so I want their best. I can't always follow up on that. But I dream for them. And I pray for them. And I hope for them. And I want to tell other people about them. And I want to see them succeed and enjoy their service to God.Or it is still another day and I am talking to someone I have just met about the gospel. I am sitting on a single lawn chair in the middle of his empty living room flat. I am pretty sure he's sitting on the floor. I would have been happy to have sat there myself and even made the attempt, but he made it pretty clear that wasn't going to happen. I notice however as I am working through the gospel, beginning with God as Creator and the implications of that, that he's having a very difficult time processing my sentences and it's not just because I am speaking English. I talk with one of the friends later, they are from the same country, he knows him well, and says it has more to do with the fact that the people from his particular village don't go to school and they don't learn how to read and they aren't taught how to study.So you know I am thinking, how do I evangelize and disciple a man who doesn't know how to read? Sharing the gospel slowly, step by step, that's the first part I know that. But because I love him, you know else I want, I want him to learn how to read. Yeah. You are right. I actually think that teaching him to read is going to be an important part of him walking with Christ, believe it or not. Social gospel? Teaching people to read? Training people how to think. Come on. Give me a break. It's called loving the person in front of you.Or it's yet another day and I am with yet another husband and wife, sitting in their bedroom actually which feels a little weird but it's the only quiet place in the whole flat, given the fact that about twelve other people stay in the same place. They've turned a bucket over and put a pillow on top so that I have a comfortable place to sit. The husband is laying in bed, covers pulled up, shivering. He's just been out of jail for about two months now and he has some excruciating disease. I am sharing the gospel but I can tell he's having a little bit of a hard time paying attention because though he's gone to the hospital several times now, he's having a very difficult time getting an opportunity to speak with anyone who cares. That in of itself is frustrating, but it's made worse by the fact that he has to walk probably six or seven kilometers to get there and his disease is affecting his feet, making it feel like he's walking on pins and needles. He just was at the hospital the other day actually because he had finally gotten an appointment. Only problem was once he got there, the doctors had decided to take the day off. They said come back next week. So you know what? As I am talking to him about Jesus, I am also feeling really sad that he's suffering the way that he is. Yet I also am hopeful because I know God may be using all these kinds of difficult experiences to bring this man to the end of himself and cause him to put his hope in Christ and it actually seems like God is doing that and I know that if that is what happens, then all this suffering will be grace and yet here's the thing, I still am sorry and I still care and I still want to find ways to help him and his family in the middle of all that, because I love God and I love him. Not enough. But some. And I think about what it would be like for me if I were in his position and how I would want someone to respond to me, and so I try figure out if there's anything legitimate I can do to show the love of Christ to this family in the middle of their difficult suffering.And you know, I am going to be honest. I am just not sure what gospel I am sharing if it doesn't produce enough love in me to care about the suffering of the person I am sharing the gospel with? Eternal suffering, first and foremost. Hands down. But also, the very present and real suffering they are experiencing right now. I have to care about that in the right way, sure. Because embracing the gospel is going to call them to another whole kind of suffering right now. It's not going to be a magical way to escape it. But at the same time, they are people. And I am people. And the difficulties of life hurt. And these kinds of consequences of sin really do make life hard and sometimes even make it harder to do the right thing and so, while I am not going to be able to alleviate all their suffering and I am not going to try and it may not even be the best thing if I could because maybe God is using that suffering in their life, still, I care, I feel, because I believe God cared for me even when I was His enemy, and He reached out and sacrificed in very real ways to show His love to me, so that I might be His son and I wonder, if God might use me to show His love in tangible ways so that this individual might better be able to hear God's Word and experience His love in the most profound ways of all.