Mozambique: What does Good News look like?

Today H [Name suppressed by request] preached on Matthew 4.

What does Good News look like for you? What does it look like to the poor? What does it look like if you have no food? If you have no water? if you are living in a hut, shaking with malaria? What does Good News look like if you have cancer? if you cannot walk? What does Good News look like for a nation in famine? to people in the middle of a flood? in the inner city where everyone around is shooting up or burning buildings? What does Good News loook like when a child is selling himself on the street?

How will God put his love in you, as an incarnational lover? I want to provoke you to ask the question of what the good news will look like.

Good news is never just words. Maybe good news looks like a life poured out. Maybe it looks like you holding a child (and getting their ringworm and scabies). I want to provoke you to what Good News looks like, not just sounds like. The Good News of the Kingdom of god -- what does it look like to carry Good news among the poor?

My description of poverty has changed over 28 years of full time ministry with R. Poverty can be someone in a suit who is poor and broken. Someone driving a Lexus who is unable to communicate to their children.

Jesus said the Good News belongs to those who are poor in Spirit. How d o we get our arms around this?

Jesus not only preached it, he lived it. If you're sick, Good News is to be healed. If you are homeless, it is to get a home.

As a little jar of clay, I am unable to hold each one. So as a preacher, I want to have some sort of impartation of the love of god. But if each of us called ones sees ourself as compelled by love, embraced by love, broken by love, then no one will lack.

Jesus poured into his disciples not just so they would know intimacy themselves, but so they would multiply love on the earth.

What does Good News look like to a paralyzed man?

What if you pray and they don't get up? Is there any Good News for themn? Is it possible for there to be Good News while you are stilll suffering? What if you are still blind? Maybe the blind man is seeing something you can't see.

What does it look like to share good news? What does healing look like? What does it look like for the Kingdom to be released so that everyone is healed, that all are fed, that none is homeless? The kingdome of heaven on earth: I'm pressing in for that. How do we contend for that?

Jesus showed us in the sermon on the mount, the beatitudes.

Every one of us could be overwhelmed because the need is so big. I've come to this place probably mroe now than ever before in my life -- poverty of spirit. I'm so in need of the presence. I'm so in need of intimacy with my bridegroomking that I need to sit and dwell and rest and press in, in the secret place and say 'I am just here for you, and I cannot do one hour of ministry unless you fill me.' Unless I am full of the presence of God I cannot go out. I don't start any meeting before 11am, except Sunday [because I spend the time with God]. So even though God taught me to stop for the one, I can't do that before 11am, because I am poor in spirit.

Jesus saw the crowds and he went up to the mountainside. He saw the multitude. and now Jesus, the son of god, who emptied himself on this planet, went up to the mountain. What was he thinking?

If Jesus had not emptied himself, if he was just supernatural in the flesh, how could we relate to that? We are just jars of clay. Jesus demonstrated what it is like to be a 'sent out' one. What did he do? He knew, as a jar of clay filled with the Holy Spirit, he understands his need to pull away. After ministeirng to the crowds he went up to that place to commune with his father, and teach those who were close to him.

He said: Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Poverty of spirit is a gift. We would like to prosper (we think we'd like it) but God takes me to a place of desperation. I'm so in need: money, schools, so many things. But if I can stay poor in spirit, God can entrust me with more of his kingdom.

I got married when I was 20, and R and I went to the mission field with a one-way ticket and $30. In my 20s I still had ambition. I thought it was cool to get invited to preach to 10,000 people.

But one day God said "stop". I thought it was the enemy and I said:
"I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!"
"Stop"
"I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!"
"Stop"
"Oh, it's you, God. Why are you telling me to stop? I'm preaching the Gospel."
I was extremely confused, and he said, "you don't know anything about the kingdom. " I tried to argue with him and explain that I did.
"I want you to sit with the poor" He said.

So we found the worst slum, nine floors up. One time 16 poilice came to try to rescue our daughter, who they assumed was sold into prostitution [because why else would we be there?]. I sat on the street corner and learned from the poor. I learned Cantonese and Indonesian. I wanted to feed them, but he said I needed to sit and be a learner, because I had no place to understand.

They [the poor] taught me dependence and need. Unless they taught me, I would not learn to communicate. Unless they protected me, I would not be safe. They would pour out themselves for hours a day, because they were poor [and had time to spend with me].

What does good news look like? What will it take for our minds and spirits to understand that unless we eat the bread of heaven we have no life in us?

Could we become as poor as a dying child in Jesus? Can we understand that unless we ive in the secret place we have no life in us? We have nothing to feed the poor.

This is a poverty of spirit where you are desperate, and look at a dying world, and look into the eyes of Jesus and say 'you can take me and break me and pour me out and give me away.'
If I can become a resting place fo the Holy Spirit! I long to be possessed by you Holy Spirit! Every day the children come to eat. Every day we drink. Every day we understand our need.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.