The Phil Files

“What would good people do if the wicked destroyed all that is good?”

The psalmist, David, asks this question in Psalm 11:3 (ERV). However, all three psalms in our reading today (Psalms 10-12) focus on this same basic issue. Those who scorn the will and the way of God have not only abandoned the poor, the needy, the helpless, the orphan, and the good people, but they also have abused, taken advantage of, and brought injustice upon them. They assume God doesn’t care, if of course, any god is there at all. They bring evil on the powerless and curse God on whom these helpless call.

//Inspiration: Psalm 12:7-8 (ERV)
LORD, take care of the helpless. Protect them forever from the wicked people in this world. The wicked are all around us, and everyone thinks evil is something to be praised!

//Incarnation:
When your heart is focused on something and go back and read familiar Scriptures, an amazing thing happens: you see things emphasized in God’s word you never noticed before. As my heart has turned to the poor in recent days, especially the poor children of Uganda, I have been overwhelmed at what God has been saying to me from the Gospel of Luke and now the Psalms. I don’t know if this is part of His plan to etch His will on my heart. Some of my Heartlight.com friends would call this not a coincidence, but a “Godincidence”!) Or this could simply be that my eyes are open to read the Scripture from another vantage point. All I know is that my eyes have been opened and that God has etched some newly discovered truths deep in my heart. Those who suffer from evil in both high and low places of authority are always the poor, the helpless, and the children. So we do cry out to God. And I will let my prayer, my invitation to God tonight be the words of the psalmist.

//Invitation:
LORD, get up and do something. God, punish those who are wicked. Don’t forget those who are poor and helpless. And, dear Father, I pledge to do what I can to help those who are forgotten, abandoned, and abused in Your name. Through Jesus I pledge this and ask for Your intervention in our world. Amen.

You know if a culture values human life by the way it treats its children. That’s why Mother Teresa responded to a Newsweek Magazine question many years ago the way she did. She was asked what she thought about abortion in America. Her response was something close to this: “When a society kills its own children, what is there left to say?”

Jesus makes clear in Luke 18 that He not only loves children, but that he will also hold accountable those who keep them from Him or cause them to stumble. In addition, Luke has emphasized strongly the way Jesus wants us treat children and the poor for the last three chapters, Luke 16-18. So often, poverty keeps children from having a chance at anything … a healthy life, opportunity to thrive and succeed, and most of all, to find Jesus and a world-wide family of grace.

I had not expected or anticipated the powerful message of these chapters to coincide with my preparation to go to Uganda and my families’ opportunity to write the two children we support monthly through Compassion, Doreen and Estarlin (both pictured in the blog). God has a way of both confronting and confirming His call to us and I see this happening to me in these chapters. I hope you will be in prayer about what God is showing you in Luke 16-18, too.

//Inspiration: Luke 18:16
Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”

//Incarnation:
I must hear the call of Jesus to me and not wait for others to recognize His voice, for He may be calling them to some other act of kindness to the poor and the childre. But this I know, I must be faithful to His call on my heart!

//Invitation:
O Lord Jesus, please help me see how can help with the many who are wanting to know you, but don’t yet know it and may never have the chance because of their circumstances. In Jesus’ name. Amen.