Living Stones – Saturday, September 16, 2017
Meet urgent needs
Titus 3:14
… let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.
Today we are inundated with television images of devastation where we live and around the world. Natural disasters as they are called are seemingly everywhere. People need help, there is an urgent need.
Natural disasters with the attendant suffering, coupled with the endless media coverage they receive keep the situations before us and often moves us to want to help.
Natural disasters are an exaggeration of the needs of people – not that those needs amid them are not real and urgent. But, there is human need around us every day and as the people of God we are to meet those needs.
We, more than politicians in general and many aid workers and the like, understand both the cause and the outcome of the situations that confront people. For that reason, we have a responsibility to act.
The thing about human need is that really, we don’t have to go looking too hard to find it. Human need is all around us.
While watching a webinar this week from a church app site, Text In Church, the presenter said that many visitors to churches are, most likely, prompted by one of 4 reasons: death, divorce, displacement, or disaster. It was his 4D Theory. Never mind debating if these are the only reasons why people visit church, the fact is that these are definitely among the reasons and point to the fact that people have needs.
Each of us, from our own life experience, knows that people have needs, urgent needs, that have to be met through others.
As Paul was completing this short missive to Titus, having dispensed with the doctrinal and administrative church issues, he was addressing some granular housekeeping matters when he made the statement about maintaining good works and meeting urgent needs.
It’s often easy to be moved by the pure force of the imagery of a natural disaster, or to be swept away by the share drama of family’s story of loss, or the appalling horror of an act of cruelty on others. Those tend to prompt quick and immediate response. Maintenance of good works, however, is another matter. Paying attention to the urgent needs of others as part of a lifestyle requires a change in our approach to our lives as Christians. The urgency of need often shows up in a moment but as time passes the urgency doesn’t always go away.
We are urged here not to get all wound up in a moment and then leave the scene, but rather, to constantly and consistently shine as God’s lights in the midst of urgent human need.
Think of these things:
- Are you aware of the urgent needs of anyone right now?
- When last did you responds to human need around you?
- What about your life would change if you were to maintain a response to some urgent need around you?
Prayer focus:
Pray today that we will know as those who have learned to maintain good works for those in urgent need.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex