The poor can't help the poor

The poor can’t help the poor.

I heard this preached a few years ago when we were in a place of transition and I was wanting to fast track the process to come to Ethiopia.  I thought that maybe THIS was the reason why it still hadn’t happened.  We were far from rich and struggled to pay our bills even, yet trusted God always to supply our needs.  Ideas started rolling through my head about businesses I could start that would support us long term while we were in Ethiopia serving the “poor”. 

I arranged a meeting with a business coach to see how I could further my innovative ideas.  The whole meeting ended up being about how there was a LOT that I NEEDED to do before I even thought about moving to Ethiopia, all based on her theology about missions.  This totally left me discouraged and emotionally unrested about the possibility that her words were true!  Thankfully I had Connect Group that night and had friends who prayed for me and dispelled the lies that the enemy started placing in my mind. 

The poor can’t help the poor, was also quite possibly one of these lies.  Did Jesus come as a rich man to earth, desiring to be the financial solution for all those who had nothing?  No.  What is poverty anyway?  Is it relative?  Is it living week to week? Is it having nothing to call your own? Having no assets and a million liabilities?  Is it a spirit or mind set that can be broken? 

Like other situations in my life, where I’ve been told to earn more and displace other priorities in my life like my family, I decided to operate in the opposite to what I’d been advised.  As a couple we decided to sell our home, which inevitably made us poorer.  We had nothing to call our own as we left New Zealand, other than the belongings we carried in our 24 suitcases.  We had no business to feed into our bank account, no residual income, no interest accumulating in any investments we had made.  We literally left as poor people –not even sure of how we would make our monthly payments.

Poverty lingered in our destination and we had nothing to offer as far as money was concerned.  Oh, such an awkward situation to be in.  I mean, after all, aren’t all ferenjis (foreigners) meant to have stash loads of money when they come to places like Ethiopia?   Um, not these ferenjis.  We discovered that all we had to give was what we had in our hearts and in our experiences.

 

But somehow we saw God provide even though we had nothing.  Miraculously answering prayers and showing us how BIG He is and how much He loves to bless His children who walk in obedience to Him.  What was this?  HOPE we could share with those who had no hope about their own financial situation out of personal experience of God's provision - it became our testimony.  He also taught us that poverty is a mindset.  It’s a place of comparison where we think that we need MORE and desire to be like those who HAVE more.  Does that not describe most of the developed world?  It certainly described the environments where we came from and the people we worked with in South Auckland.

Through the process of trust that we went through and continue to go through, God has shown us His abundance, and He has done so even more in the past couple of months.  As I went to pay the USD$900 that we owed for our children’s visas and was thinking about how much money we were "wasting" God reminded me of a dream I had just prior to leaving New Zealand, after we sold our house.  My dream was about me making a cake for my friend.  I had to walk to her house along the road and through a school and as I walked along, people kept coming up and asking me for some cake.  I let them take some and piece by piece the cake became smaller and smaller until there were only crumbs left.  I asked God what this dreamt meant as it left me quite disturbed and I knew it was a God dream and didn’t want to miss the message He was sending.  I had my own interpretations which ended up being dismissed when I went to church that Sunday.  Ps Sam Monk shared a message about giving- I think he was going through a series at that time.  He said “Some people think that God’s provision is like a cake.  That we think that when God gives out that His supply runs out and that all is left are crumbs. But God’s supply is not like that…that His supply never runs out.”  This lesson has comforted me many times over the last year.  It changed my mindset before I left for Ethiopia.  My poverty mind set was gone and the mind set of abundance was born. 

God is a God of abundance.  He is able to create something out of nothing and He seemingly continues to do so in our lives . From this place, we are able to minister to those who may seem poor to the rest of the world, but whose faith and belief in what God is able to do is so much richer than most Christians in the developed world.  They have and continue to minister to us as we have ministered to them.  

Rev 12:11  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.