As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
JAMES 2:26
I have always been passionate about my work as an evangelist. I loved teaching and preaching, bringing the good news of Christ to people. But as I grew as a Christian, I felt that God was drawing me deeper still, stirring something within me that I had intuitively known but never understood. There is no distinction between preaching and doing for Jesus. They are the wings on the same plane of faith.
I had always envisioned those who fought for justice as the heroes written about in books — other people in other countries, living in different days. Though I’d studied about the Holocaust and other horrific events, those events seemed distant in time and place. Other atrocities did too: the Rwandan genocide in 1994, during which an estimated eight hundred thousand people were mass murdered in just one hundred days; the Cambodian genocide, during which almost two million people died through political executions, starvation, and forced labor. But the day I visited Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp, I was aware of the need to fight for justice in a way I had not been before. I sensed that something new would be required of me — not someone else. Something had awakened within me that internally shifted the emphasis from we to me. God seemed to be saying: “This new love and this new sense of purpose I’ve put within you are for a reason. Rise up. Get ready. I have more for you to do.”
God wanted me to rise, ready to go, as Jesus had gone on my behalf — out of love, walking wide awake through this world, seeing one prisoner yearning to be free, and then another, and another. God did not want me staying in bed, resting while a battle rages around me, fought by others. He wanted me to go — and he wanted me to go undaunted. I never knew then that a simple step of obedience would result in what has become The A21 Campaign, an organization committed to fighting the injustice of human trafficking around the earth. (A21 stands for “abolishing injustice in the twenty-first century.”)
There are so many daunting things in the world that we must overcome: daunting needs, daunting enemies, daunting obstacles. Only the undaunted in Christ will be able to triumph over them.
This is what he wants for me. And he wants the same for you.
MOMENT OF REFLECTION
Where has God called you to go?
Do you feel daunted by the task ahead?