This morning I had the opportunity to go with a friend of mine from church to downtown Birmingham to minister to some homeless guys.  My friend has a ministry where he meets a group of guys downtown on Sunday mornings early in order to feed, encourage, and pray for them.  I had heard stories from him about the cool things that God is doing through this ministry so I decided to come check it out.

To be honest, I was kind of worried about going.  This was definitely a big step out of my comfort zone of ministering to students through small groups and preaching the Word.  The nervousness gave way to comfort and enjoyment when I arrived downtown.  The hospitality and openness of these guys to share their hearts, stories, and lives with me really blew me away.

I was struck with sorrow after hearing the stories of the journey which led these men to the streets. These were people who had been abandoned by the family and friends which cared about them prior to their struggles financially or with some form of addiction that led them to the streets.  They had been abandoned by the ones they loved and some of them had lived driven by a controlling addiction which took from them everything that they had.  These were genuinely broken people in desperate need of the love and gospel of Jesus Christ.

It was refreshing to minister to broken people who are so appreciative of your willingness to spend some time with them to hear their stories.  I feel like if Jesus lived in Birmingham He would be found not in the megachurch pulpit but sitting on the edge of the fountain in Five Points South loving on the broken.  My prayer is that God would break my heart and the hearts of His church to get out of our comfort zones and love the broken.

I just left the first session of the Passion Atlanta Regional.  Chris Tomlin and David Crowder led the session in worship and Louie Giglio preached.  Louie’s message really stuck me.  He talked about how we have be taught that Christianity is all about us.  It is about what we can get and how God can bless us and make our lives better.  Louie then goes on to talk about our short lives being a small flame that is to spread the glory of Jesus Christ and the gospel to the watching world.  The message ended with a story of a female student in Florida through the eyes of her journal with regard to her interactions with her “fruit cake” Christian roommate.  The journals go on to tell about how in the moment of a deep hurt in this girl’s life God used her roommate to share the gospel with her.  This was a very practical and real picture of how we as Christians should seek to live out the gospel to a watching world.  This also challenged me in that I am not intentional to share Jesus Christ with the people in my world who do not know Him.  I am challenged and encouraged to see what God is going to do in and through the rest of this weekend. 

“Leave out the cross, and you have killed the religion of Jesus.  Atonement by the blood of Jesus is not an arm of Christian truth; it is the heart of it.” - Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Christ’s blood is heaven’s key.” - Thomas Brooks

“The cross is God’s truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The cross means this: Jesus taking our place to satisfy the demands of God’s justice and turning aside God’s wrath.” - James Montgomery Boice

“Man of sorrows! what a name
For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim!
Hallelujah, what a Savior!”
- Phillip Paul Bliss

“What shall I say to the commendation of Christ and His Cross? I bless the Lord He has made my prison a palace to me. And what am I that He should have delt thus with me? I have looked greedy-like to such a lot as this, but I still thought it was too high for me when I saw how vile I was.” - Isabel Alison (excecuted for her faith on January 26th, 1681)

“I wish that our ministry - that mine especially - might be tied and tethered to the cross.  I would have no other object to set before you than Jesus only.”- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The heart of Christianity is Jesus Christ.  He is God who became flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross.  Jesus was very mission guided.  His mission was to come and die.  Jesus came to be the mediator between a righteous and holy God and a sinful people.  His mediation, however, was not a mediation handled with words, but rather it was a mediation in which Jesus bore the sins of the people and took upon Himself the wrath of God on behalf of the people.  This is the story of undeserved and unfathomable grace given to people who did not deserve it.  This is the gospel.  Leading up to Good Friday, we will reflect on this amazing truth through some statements from Christians throughout the centuries.  May you be lead worship and adore Jesus and to seek a deeper relationship with Him as we journey to the cross.