2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NLT) - “…Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.”

“The seven of us [John & Vera Perkins and their five young children] moved into a little three-bedroom house with Vera Mae’s grandmother. Christian friends in California had pledged to send $75 to $100 a month, but that certainly wouldn’t feed a family of seven. So right away I started to work, cutting wood and picking cotton. At first, people were embarrassed that I was having to do this kind of work alongside them.

“Though I didn’t realize it at the time, those experiences were building the foundation for our ministry. The people were seeing that I really was one of them. I was not an outsider. I was not a ‘have’ giving handouts to the ‘have nots.’ I had given up a good job, a big comfortable house, and the freedom and respect I had enjoyed in California to return to the poverty, discomfort and oppression I had left behind 13 years earlier. I was choosing to become a ‘have not’ in order to take my people the gospel. I was once again becoming one of them. To reach my people, I was following the same pattern Jesus had used to reach me. ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9)’” [John M. Perkins, With Justice For All, p.63-64].

“He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.”

Who are you becoming and why? What compels you each day? What wakes you up, what moves you, and what makes you do what you do? Is it the love of Christ? God has saved us from ourselves, from our old ways, our self-preserving ways, and our self-justifying ways. But why? So that we may move into the lives of others, into their struggles and disappointments, and into their fears and distractions so that they can know how much God loves them. Today, let’s ask God to box our lives into the love of God so that we will be available, moveable, and more like Jesus for them.

-TR