A Needful Challenge

Max Lucado is always a fabulous storyteller, as is evident in his Outlive Your Life. In this book he challenges Christians to reach out to the needy, to see the different from us as the opportunity to make a difference. I appreciated his pointing out that the Gospel is "the bread" or the essential element of this outreach and would have liked there to have been more yet about this extremely vital truth; but I recognize that Scripture does stress that we should reach out to the poor, the broken-hearted, the captive, the orphans and widows and that it indicates we should aid them with their material needs as well as point them to Christ. It was good to be reminded that God often used and uses the unlikely to be ministers, but of course it's not merely the simple and uneducated but also the educated that God used in Scripture and continues to use. We're to give God our best, out of whatever resources He's given us. I'm thankful for the challenge this book gives Christians and hope it will help to balance us rather than cause us to swing too far in another direction.