Give Your Lunch

Life has been getting in the way of blogging lately, but here's the follow up to my last post. Let me just start by saying that I have a new hero. Gary Haugen, President of International Justice Mission (IJM) is an incredible human being with great hope in our great God. It was an honor to meet him and to hear from his mouth what I believe was a message straight from God’s heart. Here are my “take aways” from the message he delivered entitled The Unfamiliar Passions of God:

• Are Jesus and I passionate about the same things?
• God hates injustice with a fierce passion.
• God desires to bring justice and rescue to the oppressed.
• He has a plan to accomplish this.
• We are the plan.
• (There is no Plan B.)

Gary told the story from John 6 about the loaves and fishes. You know the story. Jesus says to His disciples, “Feed them.” The disciples come back with, “We don’t have enough.” (They are presented with an overwhelming need and they have inadequate resources.)
Disciples: “Back to you Jesus.”
Jesus: “What do you have?”
Disciples present the boy with 5 loaves and 2 fishes.
Andrew: “What are these among so many?”
Jesus: “Give it to me.”*

Most of us believe that there is nothing we can possibly do to bring justice to the millions of victims of oppression around the world. And we are right. That would take a miracle, or many miracles. But that’s not what Jesus is asking us to do. He didn’t ask his disciples or the boy to work a miracle. Jesus took responsibility for the miracle. The disciples and the boy were responsible to simply offer what they had so that Jesus could do the miracle.

Final takeaways:

• Offer what you have (Give Jesus your lunch)
• Jesus will do the miracle.

God is blessing the efforts of International Justice Mission in miraculous ways. This, of course, should not come as a surprise! They are offering their lunches for one of God’s deepest passions. Realizing that God did not have a Plan B, they decided to show up for Plan A.

What can you and I offer to Jesus so that he can fulfill his passion and plan to rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow?

*Quoted from the message transcript.