Nowadays, to speak of religious people is to refer to fanatics, intolerant people who don't love God as Jesus taught: And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son (John 14:13). These people live by reciting their creeds, without mentioning the Word or meditating on it. Some have closed themselves off completely within their group and refuse to think about the significance of the signs and wonders performed by Jesus.

The structures of religion are tremendous and commented on by religious people as signs of faith, but is that what the Savior told us to do? (Matthew 24.1-14). How many citizens are coming down from Jerusalem, where God's love resides, and falling victim to the thieves of dignity, who break them by binding them to various sins? This has made the religious, who don't have the anointing to set them free, pass by (Luke 10.25-37). The most they do is treat the mind, not the spirit!

Jesus said: For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you (John 13:15). There was a feast in Jerusalem, the city of God's love, and in a place of five pavilions, a multitude of sick people lay. The Master left the feast of men and went to the feast of heaven, healing a paralyzed man who had been there for 38 years. This man had spent his time waiting for the waters to move, but Jesus healed him (John 5:1-14).

Could it be that the Spirit of the Good Shepherd lives in us, leading us to abandon our position of well-being to go out in search of drug users and those who destroy themselves in prostitution and crime? Have we proclaimed God's love to these individuals, or have we neglected their afflictions? Jesus said that the shepherd seeks out the lost sheep and, when He finds it, puts it on His shoulder. Then, when He returns home, He celebrates having found it (Luke 15:4-6).

According to the Master, the pure and undefiled way to serve God is to be concerned about those who have gone astray and live on the margins of life. They are orphans before God, because they are unaware of Christ's redemptive work. Keeping the 99 sheep at home is not the best attitude while there are still some lost, which will be found by predators. The worship that God wants from us is done in dangerous places, behind the stray sheep. Think about it!

We have probably equated ourselves with the hypocrites, who honored the Lord with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him: He [Jesus] answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men (Mark 7:6,7). Does this comparison apply to us?

There are many “widows” in our midst who, because they don't have the Most High as their God, fail to be visited by Him in times of trouble. Because of this, they are not kept from the corruption of the world. We need to check our connection with the Lord. Being a steward of goods means living to reconnect people to Him by preaching the Gospel of peace!

In Christ, with love,

R. R. Soares