Throughout the year we are bombarded with requests for donations. Whether it’s through snail mail, email, telephone (I really mean cell phone, who has a landline anymore?), internet, TV and even at the till of our local retail or grocery store.
In the back of our minds we know we should give to help others; that its the right thing to do. However, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by all of the requests and needs, so we tend to default to doing nothing at all, especially where money is concerned. After all, didn’t Jesus say that the poor will always be among us?
As I continue with The ABC’s of Scripture and Christians Who Lived Them, I want to introduce you to another Scripture and a Christian couple who were passionate about helping the poor, but also helping the Church become aware of the needs of those outside of it’s four walls.
Deuteronomy 15:10-11 (NLT)
“Give generously to the poor, not grudgingly, for the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do.”
The whole East End of London reeked of crime, misery, hopelessness and despair. In the year 1861, almost every other shop along the Mile End Road in London’s slum region was a pub or a tavern.
A tall, neatly dressed man in a black suit, with a wide brimmed hat, walked purposefully up the crowded, filthy street, looking completely out of place. He took in the drunken men and half-dressed women; the toddlers and stray dogs foraging for food, while mothers, filthy and drunk, passed bottles of gin to their children.
This only made him more determined as he stepped into the doorway of a red-bricked tavern, aptly named THE BLIND BEGGAR, and pulled out his Bible.
In a deep voice, heavy with compassion and conviction he called out over the revelry, “There is a heaven in East London for everyone who will stop and look to Christ as a personal Savior!”
Someone hit him with a rotten egg. Others scoffed and laughed.
He challenged them, “Why do you drink your wages away while your wives and children are at home without food or shoes on their feet?” This brought a sudden silence.
In that same deep, calm voice he invited them, “Come to the tent service at Whitechapel this evening and meet a Savior who loves you!” He prayerfully left them to their jeers and taunts.
YOU NEVER KNOW WHO GOD WILL TOUCH
However, later that night, in a large canvas tent, the ‘riff raff’ of the East End began filling the rows of wooden benches. They were rowdy, reeked of gin and sweat but were curious. Among them was a professional boxer named Peter Monk, who later described what happened that night:
“There he was holding forth, surrounded by the blackguards of Whitechapel, who in them days were the greatest vagabonds you could meet anywhere on God’s earth.”
As the crowd mocked and laughed, the tall man in the dark suit began singing until he almost drowned out their noise. Monk threw down his coat and stood by the preacher and “in two minutes all those blackguards were as quiet as lambs.”
By the end of the preacher’s sermon that burly boxer was kneeling at the front of that make-shift church, with a dozen others, asking Jesus to be Lord of his life. Peter Monk became the preacher’s self-appointed body guard as the tent meetings continued every night and three times on Sundays for the following six weeks!
The preacher was convinced that the salvation of the soul was paramount to the salvation of the body and that nothing would change in the slums of London without Jesus changing hearts.
He might only see a dozen or so turn to Jesus in one night, but their conversions were usually radical and life changing. Pub owners resented the affect he and his group of do-gooders were having on their businesses. They were losing some of their best customers.
MOTIVATING THE CHURCH