Is Every Christian Called to Serve People in Need?

Recently some friends of mine asked me if my calling as a follower of Jesus is difficult. I think that, clearly, my calling is difficult at times. It comes with a cost. However, it is my opinion that God gives all of his followers difficult callings. Many times Christians choose to be disobedient to the difficult callings that God gives them in order to embrace a more comfortable cultural version of American Christianity, but that still doesn't change the fact that when we enter into a relationship with Jesus we are called to become deeply involved in his mission to reach the lost in this world. That is one of our main functions in this life... to reach people who are hurting and in need of a Saviour.

Many Christians will disagree with me, and I'm okay with that, but I think that all believers in God are called to serve the poor in one way or another. Our callings to the poor may look very different, but from my perspective it appears that Jesus wants all of us to be in relationships with people who are struggling in this world. When a Christian who is not involved in caring for the poor becomes "convicted" in their heart after reading a book about serving the poor, watching an inspirational movie about sold-out followers of Jesus giving themselves away to marginalized people, or listening to a speaker passionately describe their work with people in need, that may be the Holy Spirit prompting them to get involved relationally with struggling people. God's church is the hope of the world, and when we fail to live out that function we are being disobedient to our Creator.

The concept of serving the poor, and living out difficult callings, goes much further than giving money to charities. Giving money to the church or charity is simply good stewardship of what God has given us to steward. Also, we must go much further than simply talking about the poor. Everyone seems to have a cause nowadays because that's the cool thing in our affluent culture, but God wants us to give ourselves away to the poor by building meaningful, long term relationships. Don't get me wrong... there are many people who are also called by God to reach middle class and afflent people (I could argue that we are all called to do that as well). However, if we fail to build relationships with marginalized people then there may always be something missing in our hearts and in our faith because we are missing out on a lot of what God wants to do through each of us in this short life that we are given to steward. The best thing to do to overcome that is to listen to what God is asking us to do, and then go and do it. Sometimes we don't need to wait for a program, we just need to go to where hurting people are and start talking with them and listening to their stories. If we remain obedient to Christ, then he will show us what to do from there.