Flares and Fault Lines

Let's get right to it. This is a flare request. (Flares=prayers)

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1.27

Hopesprings wants nothing to do with the other kinds and forms of religion. We don't want to wound, manipulate, build up walls and barriers, or otherwise run aground in our pursuit of "holiness". We want to see Bangor, and now Siouxland, with Jesus' eyes and be a part of advancing the good news of God's grace and peace given freely to people in the life of His son. We want the reputation of Jesus, friend of sinners like me, the one who was called a drunkard, a glutton, and demon-possessed by the religiously powerful.  

To do this, we have done away with what is most often referred to as religion. The word itself is found only once in the Scripture, in the book of James, and is pretty clearly defined to fly in the face of what most people think of when the hear the word or talk about their experience with it.

Have you ever heard someone really, truly talk about their "religion" this way? How often has it been about "dos and don'ts", fear, guilt, manipulation, or a horrible memory that pushed someone far from God so long ago? How often has it been degenerated to something akin to a swear word?

Orphans and widows in their distress. This is how the Scripture refers to the lonely, the fatherless, the outcast, the hopeless, the down-and-out, the ones too far and too low for the "religious" to stop and offer hope and help (See Jesus' story about the Good Samaritan, metaphors about gnats, camels, dill, and white-washed tombs, and generally every word He ever said to the "religious elite").  

We want to see and serve the way Jesus sees and serves.  

We want to love with His tenacity and tendency to go after the least and the invisible.

We want to know the fatherless, the lonely...to be bearers of good news, shown and told in the cracks and crevices of hearts giving up on God and on religion.

Please pray for Hopesprings in Sioux City: that we might see as God sees and serve in the ways that redeem religion, creating a place of hope and help in the community.  

How is God challenging you to love and serve the lonely and the broken?