1 John 3:18.

I think we forget how much we as Americans are truly blessed. Some specifics for me are listed below:

To be able to live in a free country to worship God freely and not be persecuted for it, is HUGE. To have the means to be able to go to a good, Christian university where you have peers/friends who genuinely want to grow in their walk with Christ is rare. To have both parents be followers of Christ and also happily married, with all of us living under one roof (very comfortably, I might add), is also very rare. To have friends and family who would be willing to take a bullet for you, is without a doubt, a great blessing.

And these are only a few of the many blessings I have encountered in my short 19 years.

We forget. SO often.

Our chapel speaker this week was Mike Yankoski, the author of the book titled Under the Overpass, which is about how he and a friend of his became homeless for a number of years as an experiment to see what it was like and how they would be treated. Conviction gripped me as he spoke of the many so-called "Christian" people doing Bible studies at a restaurant where they were sitting, waiting for someone to talk to them, to give them food, to treat them as PEOPLE. Guess what? THESE PEOPLE DIDN'T EVEN LOOK AT THEM. Even though I haven't encountered very many homeless people, how many people have I seen from afar sitting alone in the cafeteria, or somewhere else, or someone that needed help, or even a lunch, but didn't even give them as much as a sideways glance? How many people could I have said "hi" to, offered to let them sit at a table with me and my friends, or just asked how they were doing that day? How could I forget so easily that I was once one of those people sitting all alone at a lunch table in the seventh grade? How could I have the audacity to complain about not having enough money to pay for room & board at John Brown University when there are precious, valuable people dying every single day from starving or not having enough clean water?

We have it far too good.

Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment was that we "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and that "the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:37, 39). Loving our neighbor equates with loving God. If we love others, we love God.

How do we love them? Look at Matt. 25:31-46. Specifically in v. 34-40:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

How can we love God with our lips, and then turn around and fail to take care of His creation?

However, we need to remember that we shouldn't just do the action and not give them the message of hope. The Gospel is CRUCIAL. It is what separates a true mission trip from a service project. It's what separates love from mere pity. Don't get these things mixed up. The Gospel needs to be intertwined WITH the action. You can't have one without the other.

I admit, I have such a hard time applying this to my life. Mostly because I forget so often how much I am blessed. I need to keep these blessings at the front of my mind, as well as the people I could and should be reaching out towards.

So let us not just talk the talk, but walk the walk. As 1 John 3:18 commands us, let us love in deed and in truth.