Rebuild the City

"No offense to the Fixes, but I am going to invite who ever God wants me to bring a word to bring a word. This means that they might be white or Japanese. It's whoever God wants to come, will come."  These were the words from the pastor yesterday to his congregation just after I had sat down from preaching.

A few weeks ago in meeting this pastor, he had invited me to speak at this tiny store front church,  located right in the middle of the hood, in another part of town. He told me that the Lord needed to use me to tell his church something.

If I am honest, I was totally intimidated at the invitation. I am a teacher, not a preacher normally.  Stylistically, I knew I would not bring the same excitement to the table that this church was used to.   I am nobody. Why would God want to use me to tell this church anything? However, I have been around enough to know that the Lord uses the weak and foolish things to shame the wise.  I certainly am both weak and foolish.  I knew that the bottom line was that I needed to be obedient to this call. I needed to step out and do what the Lord had asked me to do. I am so very thankful that I did.

Armed with listening to Sho Baraka's "Rebuild the City," a million times in a row the Lord inspired me to speak about a man called to rebuild, Nehemiah.  We knew our whole family needed to attend.  Our family is one of missionaries. My hubby and the kids sat there in the front row.  The call needed to be spoken.  The Lord wants to rebuild the city. He wants to rebuild it from the inside out. He begins with our hearts in reconciliation to our Savior. Then we must be reconciled to each other.

Often the shade of my skin is by far the lightest in any given room that I am in.  I know that my heart cries out for the repentance of the crimes other with my same shade have incurred. I never realized that there could be those on the other side who need reconciliation just as desperately.  

The eyes that looked on me as I stepped into the pulpit were many who warily felt as if I had invaded their safe place. It was a hard sermon to preach. The word that the Lord had given me was one of reconciliation and restoration.  I watched the barriers crumble as I spoke of the same problems my family might face as theirs. The separation was not that great.  We talked of the Lord's call to use each of us together as a unit to see this city rebuilt. By the end I knew that my family needed to walk along side this church as they reach out to the people in the public housing projects right there in their midst. The pastor told me that I spoke on everything that the Lord has put in his heart. I was warmed as he spoke of the building they are going to rise across the street right in the middle of the homes that stand there.  He has never read a book about reaching out to the people who surround him, yet he fully understands the needs of his neighbors.  At one time Christ reached down and grabbed this crack addict and shook him clean. As we made plans for our family to walk it out with this little church I knew that steps toward reconciliation had been taken that day.  We are in one accord. The Lord needs to see this work to its end. 

When I sat the pastor spoke for a few moments. He backed up my words. Honestly, he said many things that I had wanted to but did not feel were my place.  There was saddness at the reality that the women much outnumbered the men on Sunday morning.  The reminder that families need to be reconciled to each other. I had mentioned us helping each other. He pointedly said that not one member of this church should be going hungry. Why? They should be standing together to help each other out.

Just by showing up that morning our family was a testimony.  One woman pulled me aside to tell me how much it meant to see parents and children who loved each other as much as we did. She said she had not seen that for a very long time.

Finally, we had to remember who our God is and what he will do:

Isaiah 44:

24. "This is what the LORD says-- your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,
25. who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense,
26. who carries out the words of his servants and fulfills the predictions of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, 'It shall be inhabited,' of the towns of Judah, 'They shall be built,' and of their ruins, 'I will restore them,'
27. who says to the watery deep, 'Be dry, and I will dry up your streams,'
28. who says of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, "Let it be rebuilt," and of the temple, "Let its foundations be laid." '

Let it be rebuilt. Let us do it together.  Jesus calls us to merely follow and be obedient. No matter where we are from. No matter what we look like. Why is is so hard for us to get the same point??