← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
Jesus Loved the Poor and Did Justice; We Can Too
00:21:27
In this episode, Dan Wilt explores how the kingdom of God is revealed through acts of mercy, justice, and love for the vulnerable. Discover how biblical principles can transform your daily life and deepen your faith. Dan shares stories of people living out Jesus’ call to serve the hungry and oppressed, linking Old Testament justice with New Testament teachings. This isn’t just about charity; it’s about embodying Christ’s love in everyday interactions. Perfect for believers eager to act on their faith, this episode invites you to embrace Jesus’ mission of justice and mercy. Tune in to learn how your everyday moments can become expressions of divine love and justice. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction and Spiritual Awakening 02:58 The Call to Care for the Poor 11:45 Active Participation in Ministry 14:49 Living the Way of Jesus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Join us for All The Things ► https://my.seedbed.com/product/all-the-things-wake-up-call-workbook/ Sing along with us! ► http...
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Foreign. Sower Nation Today is Sunday, June 14th in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm Dan Welt and this is your wake up call. We are in our all the things everyday ministry in the power of the Spirit series. And thank you for those sending in holy Spirit stories. You're taking the adventure, I'm joining you in it of moving into our normal everyday situations in our normal everyday way and expecting that the spirit of God in us will move through us, will give us eyes to see, ears to hear what the Father is doing. And we have a few prayers going on inside of us. Come, Holy Spirit. And then of course our kingdom prayer, our traveling prayer. Your kingdom come, your will be done. Your kingdom come, your will be done. It's a little seven word prayer. Is that right? Your kingdom come, your will be done. Yes. Seven word prayer. That's a great number. And it's stirring in our hearts and that's helping us. And we're getting these stories in. I'm reading them. Thank you for sending them in. And we are asking the kingdom question, may I pray, pray for you? Or may I pray for you now? Or may I pray for you? Through this season, we're saying it, we're texting it, we're communicating it through cards and letters. We're doing it in different ways that work for us according to our spiritual gifts. We've been in a season of learning more and more about spiritual gifts in this time with our friend John Thompson and his book Convergence. And we're right now, as I record, we're running, beginning our second session tomorrow night, our third session, excuse me, our final session of our discover your spiritual gifts course. And it has just been fantastic. We are learning, we're growing. So there are ways God wants to move through you. There are ways that God wants to move through me. And this whole series is about saying yes. Yes to being apprentices of Jesus, yes to understanding what Acts 1:1 says. What were all the things that Jesus did and taught and mentored his talmidim, his disciples, his students in as well his apprentices. And so we're stepping into that story. We're walking with our rabbi through life. We're on a journey with him. We're on a journey together. And I am just so encouraged by it. I want to remind you, send in those stories to us. Send them in to me. Seedbed.com Holy SpiritStories. You can go there, you can put them in a form that we've created. And if you prefer to just send them to wakeupcalleedbed.com that works too to email them. But the form is there for you and we are collecting these stories of all that God is doing. So wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Let's pray our prayer of consecration as we begin today's meeting with Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you and we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is titled Jesus loved the Poor and did justice and we can too hear the word of the lord. It's from Matthew 25:34, 36. Then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my Father. Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. The Word of the Lord. Consider this. We sat with our guitars at the front of the auditorium, ready to lead Christmas carols at the rescue mission with our friends who were experiencing homelessness. As we began to sing familiar carols, our voices rose together, celebrating Emmanuel, God with us, our faith rising together in worship. And afterward we ate together, sharing table fellowship and talking about our mutual need for God. We didn't have the same financial or personal resources, but we did have the same resource of Jesus and one another as we laughed and told stories together. The kingdom of God in the long tradition of the Jews and in the ministry and teaching of Jesus, includes caring for the poor, the marginalized, the vulnerable, the orphan, the widow, the foreigner, and those needing us to lend our voices for justice. Justice is about balancing the scales so that every person is given the dignity due them as an image bearer of God. All the things that Jesus began to do and to teach include a conscious leaning toward those on the margins of society struggling to sustain their own lives through the most basic means. Jesus embodies this kingdom, lean toward the vulnerable, and encourages his disciples to do the same. The Old and New Testaments come together in a powerful statement that God is truly with us, bringing good news, trust to the poor. In the Old Testament, the call to care for those in need is clear. Deuteronomy 10:18 he defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. Deuteronomy 15:7 8 if anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land, the LORD your God is giving you. Do not be hard hearted or tight fisted toward them. Rather be open handed and freely lend them whatever they need. Wow. Deuteronomy 15:11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open handed towards your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. Isaiah 58:67 is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked, to clothe them and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Jesus in the Gospels affirms this commitment of the eternal God to those in need. Luke 6:20 looking at his disciples, he said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. In Luke 4:18 the spirit of the LORD is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free. Luke 14:13 14 but when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. It doesn't stop there. Then in the New Testament, the followers of Jesus carry on his active pursuit of the needy. All they asked Galatians 2:10 all they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along. This is the way of the people of Jesus. Romans 12:13 Share with the Lord's people who are in need practice hospitality. James 1:27 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. And I'll just add here and its value systems that look through the poor rather than to them and then James 2:5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? Amen. The word of the Lord Caring for the poor is among all the things that Jesus does and teaches us to do. The kingdom of God in both his message and his ministry includes making sure the poor and the oppressed are cared for. In the new creation to come, poverty will be ended. But for now, Jesus identifies himself as he does in Matthew 25:34, 36 with the poor. Let's get this deep in our bones as it was for the disciples. It is impossible to do what Jesus did and to teach what he taught without a profound, direct and active personal ministry to the poor, the marginalized, and those suffering the injustice of a society that dismisses the weak. Yes, we do it all together as the ecclesia, as the church, as the body. But it's also a very personal invitation and commission with Christ that we are invited into. Jesus in you wants to use you and work through you to minister to those who are weak and vulnerable to the poor around you. Kingdom people who want to do all the things that Jesus did actively and intentionally lean toward caring for the needy. This posture is heals us as we heal others. It is our way, the way of Jesus. Well, let's pray our prayer together in this Lord Jesus, give me eyes to see the poor and the vulnerable all around me. I want to practice caring for the weak and the marginalized to go beyond talk to active participation in seeing that they are fed and clothed. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Amen. And here are today's journal prompts Journal about these questions in your all the Things journal. Who are the needy around me? Who are the needy around me? Take a moment in your journal to just write their names, to even just describe. It's that person I see who's always on that street corner. It's that particular person I often see at Name them, see them and let Jesus begin to work something by his spirit in you toward them. And the second journal prompt is where can I participate in active ministry to the poor and the suffering in a way that expresses that the kingdom of God is truly good news for the poor? From Luke 4. Where can I participate? Name that and just begin to talk to the Lord about it. Is there a way you're inviting me to even more actively participate in this expression of your ministry? I've enjoyed connecting with our brothers and sisters in the Salvation army world and and often I leave settings where I'm with their pastors and their leaders and people in their congregations. And I'm moved by the intense care for the poor and the suffering in their communities. I know that we do it in our churches. I've just loved seeing how very intentionally that community of Jesus, part of our family is so devoted to, to ministering to those that are right near them, to being kingdom outposts in their communities. And so just begin to ask the Lord these, these questions. So today's activation is this. Today do a mental review of your church and community to note according to your, your journal prompts there who is poor, who is needy, who is marginalized, who is socially vulnerable around you. And after noting this, choose one of these people or groups and take one step toward helping them in Jesus name. All right, there's our entry for today. We want to not only follow the way of Jesus, we want to be in the way. We want to be part of the way. I love that Christians were called, you know, in those earliest years and we see it in the Book of Acts. These are our followers of the way. They're people of the way. And caring for the marginalized, for the vulnerable around us is the way of Jesus. My experience has been that often in moments, my own spiritual gifts and gifts are given by the Spirit. For moments when I am with those who are vulnerable. I remember one time sitting at a breakfast that our church was hosting in our downtown where our church offices were. And we would have this breakfast every week. And I remember sitting with a group of these friends. And we weren't all from the same socioeconomic background. We didn't have the same even people resources around us. But we laughed and we encouraged one another. And I left with my own heart full and just a deeper desire to pray for each of these friends by name. So whatever that means for you, let's entrust it to the Lord and stay in the all the things way of Jesus. So today we're going to sing Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It's hymn number 37 in our great Redeemer's Praise. And let's conclude our time in this meeting with Jesus by worshiping together.
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Come Thou fount of every blessing Tune my heart to sing thy grace Streams of mercy never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above Praise the mountain fixed upon it Mount of thy redeeming love Here I raise my Ebenezer hither By thy help I'm come and I hope by thy good pleasure Safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger Wandering from the fold of God he to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood O to grace how great a Debtor daily I'm constrained to be Let thy goodness like a fetter Bind my wandering heart to thee it prone to wonder Lord I feel it prone to le God I love here's my heart, Lord Take and seal it Seal it for thy courts above Prone, prone to wonder, Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love here's my heart, Lord Take and seal it Seal it for Thy courts above
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Amen So many beautiful lines in this hymn that even connect with today's entry. Look at this. Jesus sought me when I was a stranger wandering from the fold of God and oh, to rescue me from danger he interposed his precious blood. I believe that we as the body are called to interpose. We're called to step into these situations, to rescue strangers from that place of danger, to rescue them with the love of God and the power of his spirit moving from us, through us and for us, ministering to us as we minister to others in Jesus name. It's part of our all the things ministry. And then of course, prone to wander Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love but here's my heart, Lord Take and seal and seal it before Thy courts above what a great hymn to begin our day. All right, let's get our seeds together and I'll see you on the field for the awakening. I'm Dan.