Exodus 6 – Be a need meeter

“Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments’…So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage.”

This is why missionaries build hospitals, build up infrastructure, and meet the needs of the people as the share Jesus with the culture. An oppressed, suffering, dying community will eventually reach a point where all they can see is the cruelty and inequity in life. By meeting the needs of others a missionary demonstrates that there is someone who cares and there is hope. Once a person recognizes that hope does exist it is a much smaller step to recognize that the source of that hope is Jesus.

Too often at home we claim to be ministering, but we are doing it without actually filling any of the needs of the people to whom we are ministering. Worse, we attempt to meet the needs we think need to be met in their life, and fail to meet their actual felt needs.

We need to meet the needs of those we are ministering to. We need to make sure that we are meeting the needs they feel and not the needs we insinuate into their life. We need to come to a resolution that ultimately all needs are met in Jesus.