30 Feet

Homelessness in Dallas, Collin, and Tarrant Counties has been on the rise. . .again.  We saw this first hand while making a recent delivery into downtown Dallas.  As we pulled up to one of the many, many facilities serving the homeless here in Dallas, there were dozens of people crowding the building, laying on the sidewalks–or rather melting in the 100+ degree weather (several with their pets), and seeking shade under the trees.  Some were walking out of the air conditioned shelter with plates of food.  My heart has a hard time handling these type of deliveries because I stare this issue in the face and it hurts.  (If you haven’t made a delivery to one of these areas of town, I encourage you to.)  We should never be complacent or apathetic or numb to suffering and to the bondage that the Enemy has people in.  That is demonstrated in how close some of these people were to real help and change.  Right inside the doors to this facility were compassionate staff members ready with resources, connections, treatment centers, and suggestions to help get every one of those homeless on their feet again.  Yet dozens lay just outside, literally 30 feet from a new start and a productive life.  I hurt over this because it illustrates just how successful the Enemy is at keeping people bound, how many of us are emotionally unable or unwilling to receive help (which is spiritual bondage too), and how many of us are buried seemingly too deep in despair to know how to get out.  I do not pretend to know all the practical answers to the problem of homelessness.  But I truly believe much of it is spiritual.  I’ve never been homeless, but in talking to some of them, I can hear the pain and conflict inside.  Jesus addressed this internal battle in John 5:1-15 with the story of the healing at the pool of Bethesda.

“Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.  One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.”

Jesus made him well.  Jesus, and only Jesus, has the power to break spiritual bondage to sin, addiction, hopelessness, homelessness, and any number of chains that keep people bound.  We as the body of Christ need to be praying often for the eyes of those suffering to be opened to the way out, that they will want to be well, and that God will enable them to step even 30 feet into the promises and loving care of Jesus Christ.  This is why I am so passionate about Urban Bible Outreach.  I love that we partner with those meeting physical needs–that is a vital, necessary, and first-response component.  But we follow up with the Word of God–the power of God entering dark places of physical and spiritual bondage–and show people that 30 feet is not too far to walk when Jesus is waiting to deliver you.