We listened to this podcast by David Platt - which was a speech he gave at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2016 - and after the recent Administration's decision regarding immigration and refugees, was re-posted this past week at his Radical website.
We think his message was a good reminder for American followers of Christ. Sometimes we get so caught up in the current worldview of our country, that we forget to see things through a Biblical worldview - to see everything through God's lens.
When we focus on the world and all the voices clamoring for attention, man's opinions harden our hearts and cause our love to grow cold. Unfortunately, some of us need the reminder that God loves us ALL! He created each person uniquely; yet each one in His own image. He died for each one individually; whether we're Americans, Syrians, Iraqis, Europeans, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus ... and so on.
The refugee crisis is an orphan crisis.
It is a human trafficking crisis.
Image: UNHCR via Faceboo
The UN reports that 70,000 Syrian refugee children are living without their fathers and nearly four thousand more have had both parents killed or imprisoned. Many simply cannot find their parents because of separation during their flight from war torn regions.
Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
Bottom line, Christians cannot turn away and overlook 60 million people who have been driven from their homelands; cast aside as the world's refuse.
(Eerie, isn't it, how history tends to repeat itself? Some 60+ years ago, the world slammed its doors shut to the diaspora of the Jews?)
We can pretend that granting asylum is a grave threat to the security of our nation and there is a very good argument for that. But as the freest, strongest, most prosperous nation in the world, it is unconscionable to slam our doors to brothers and sisters in Christ fleeing for their very lives simply because it might be uncomfortable for us or have the potential to take away what most Americans revere foremost: our believed safety.
Photo courtesy of the Chronicle Herald.
We shudder to think of how it must grieve God's heart to see His Church - we who are supposed to be His hands and feet! - allow the work of Christ come to a halt because of fear.
David rightly notes that millions of people are fleeing countries that are closed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; countries where the Light of God has nearly been snuffed out by oppressive regimes and yet these people flood across Europe and into the Western World seeking refuge.
Why are we not greeting them with open arms and sharing the love of Christ with them? Why do we choose to miss giving the life-saving message of the Gospel to people whose hearts are softened in their greatest time of need?
It should hit us like a ton of bricks that we are missing the most incredible opportunity of our time to respond to the most incredible crisis of our time for His Kingdom purposes.
We pray you take a moment to watch this with an open heart...
"For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in..." - Matthew 25:35
So what now??
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