Who is willing to pay?

Great problems are solved only at a great cost. Evil doesn’t go away quietly. Broken systems do not change without struggle. When Jesus stepped into our broken world to defeat sin and death, it cost his life. Not just his time, energy, and effort. His life. Redemption costs something. Someone has to be spent. I mean, name the issue, point to the place: trafficking in Cambodia and Thailand, the devastation in Haiti, genocide in Rwanda, hatred and killing in Sudan, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, starvation in Somalia or China, gang violence and drug abuse in downtown Atlanta – these problems don’t just go away.

Someone has to be spent.














As I’m looking out the window at the trash dump that is Poi Pet, I’m overwhelmed. Halfhearted measures and temporary concern won’t change a thing in this place. I’m reminded of when Paul wrote in Colossians 1:24:

“Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body which is the church.”

There’s more work to be done, Paul is saying. More to be sacrificed. More to be suffered. He’s not saying that Jesus’ sacrifice was incomplete. No, Jesus died once, for all, for all time. But cultures are still broken. Peoples are still living in darkness. Things like sex slavery still exist. And if we want to take what Jesus has done and make it a reality in a place like Poi Pet, we’ll have to suffer too. We’ll have to sacrifice too. We’ll have to be spent as well. Because redemption costs something, and we’re going to have to fill up in our flesh what’s lacking, what is still yet to be paid.

People are going to have to give. Some people are going to have to go. Some people are going to have to go and stay a while. Some are going to have to choke on this dust and smell these sewers for a while. Someone is going to have to go to these muddy villages and teach for a while. Someone is going to have to love on these girls who’ve escaped the brothels for a while. Somone is going to have to give micro loans and cows and seeds to parents so they won’t sell their children for income. It’s going to take time. It’s not going to be easy or fast. And someone, maybe lot’s of someones are going to have to fund it all.





















Bottom line is that it’s going to cost us if we want to do something about sex trafficking in Poi Pet. Or hey Buckhead church folks, it’s going to cost us if we want to see salvation & redemption come to Buckhead. And I pray that I, that we would be a people who are willing to pay that price. I hope we will not shrink back. I mean seriously, imagine what we could do in our days. Imagine what God could do through us in Buckhead and in place around the globe like Poi Pet in these days! Imagine what we could look back on 10, 15, 50 years from now and say, “can you believe that God used us to do THAT?!” It’s possible. Seriously! God desires to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us.

We just have to be willing to pay the price. Our God is a God who gets right down in the middle of the mess, the brokenness, the dirty, the ugly, and the sin of this world, and it will cost something to join him.