Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger, 120 miles west of Dallas. He held an outdoor worship service last Sunday in front of their 103-year-old building, which was destroyed by fire last Thursday evening.

In his sermon, he spoke of residents who lost everything as their homes were turned to rubble and firefighters from thirteen state agencies and forty-eight local fire departments who dropped everything to help. Among them was Eastland County Sheriff Deputy Sgt. Barbara Fenley, who was killed while going door to door trying to help people escape. 

In other news, four US soldiers were killed in a plane crash during a NATO exercise. The White House warned yesterday that the Russian government “is exploring options for potential cyberattacks.” Public health experts warn that a more transmissible version of the omicron variant may fuel a surge of COVID-19 infections in the US. In the continuing strategy to normalize LGBTQ activity, the movie Lightyear will feature Pixar’s first same-sex kiss. 

And amid the escalating tragedy in Ukraine, this report was especially grievous: Boris Romanchenko survived the Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, but he did not survive the carnage being perpetrated by Vladimir Putin. The ninety-six-year-old was recently killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, another victim of Russia’s atrocities. 

However, while we seem to be surrounded by evil, suffering, and deception on every side, there’s always more to the story. Pastor Berry testified in his sermon: “We are always more than the tragedies we face. There is beauty in ashes, hope in despair, and hope is evident, even in mourning.” 

How can we find such hope where we need it most today? 

Why Denzel Washington is grateful for the “grace of God” 

Yesterday, we discussed God’s invitation to see pain and suffering as opportunities for the gospel when we exercise the power of courageous compassion. Today, let’s focus on the power we need to demonstrate that power to others. 

Like a group of investors who purchased a Caribbean island, we can withdraw from the world and its problems. But for Christians, this keeps our salt in the saltshaker, our light under a basket (Matthew 5:13–16). 

Or, like actor Denzel Washington, we can view our abilities and resources as gifts given by the “grace of God” and use what we have “to help others.” 

The difference Jesus makes in those who follow him is documented regularly by research. For example, a new study shows that teenage Christian boys from working-class families who regularly participate in their church and demonstrate faith in God are twice as likely to earn bachelor’s degrees as their nonreligious or moderately religious peers. And research by the Barna Group reports that 61 percent of practicing Christians said they are flourishing in romantic relationships and friendships, compared to only 28 percent of all US adults who said the same. 

“This is the way, walk in it.” 

I was privileged to speak last Sunday and Monday at the First Baptist Church in Midland, Texas, where Janet and I served as pastor from 1988–94. They are one of the finest New Testament congregations I have ever known. Their vision statement, displayed where everyone who walks the halls of the church can see it, explains why: “To know Christ and make him known.” 

Their outstanding pastor, Dr. Darin Wood, and the congregation understand that each side of the statement is essential to the other. We must know Christ before we can make him known, and we must make him known to know him better. 

We must breathe in to breathe out and breathe out to breathe in. 

You and I obviously cannot give others what we do not possess ourselves. To teach you to speak French, I would first have to learn how to speak French. But the harder I work to teach you French, the more French I am likely to learn. 

Craig Denison is right: “It’s in seeking relationship with God that we become familiar with his voice and are able to follow him as sheep with their Shepherd.” Craig cites these promises: 

• “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known” (Jeremiah 33:3). When last did you hear “things that you have not known” from God?
• “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isaiah 30:21). When last did you hear such a word from your Father?
• “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13). When last did you hear the Spirit’s voice in your mind and heart?

“Let not the rich man boast in his riches” 

Our hurting world desperately needs the gift of authentic Christianity. Lives being transformed every day by the living Lord Jesus are proof that God’s word is true and his grace is amazing. 

Unfortunately, many of us settle for a religion about Jesus when we could have an intimate relationship with him. To experience such a relationship daily, as Oswald Chambers reminds us, I must give up “my claim to my right to myself.” When I do, “The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.” 

When last did you make such a “free committal” of yourself to Jesus? 

The Lord spoke through his prophet: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lᴏʀᴅ who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth” (Jeremiah 9:23–24). 

In what will you boast today?

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Refugees, mostly women with children, wait for transportation at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, Saturday, March 5, 2022, after fleeing from the Ukraine. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

The Baptist church in Chelm, Poland, has become a gateway to safety and security for hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing their homeland. Church volunteers tell refugees that the church has free drinks, showers, and places to sleep. The congregation has also set up a children’s area where they can play or watch educational videos on a screen.

Marek Glodek, president of the Baptist Union of Poland, says, “What we’re seeing is a movement of love and generosity across this nation. Poles are opening their doors and arms to Ukrainians. They are taking them into their churches. They are taking them into their homes. They are feeding them. They are caring for them.” 

He adds: “This is what Jesus calls his believers to do all the time. Polish Christians are taking the teachings of Jesus seriously and living them out each day during this situation.” 

Chinese airliner crashes in southern China 

This morning’s headlines remind us that such “situations” are a tragic part of life on this fallen planet. 

China’s Civil Aviation Administration is reporting this morning that a China Eastern Airlines jetliner has crashed in southern China with 132 people on board. Police are hunting two suspects after gunfire broke out Saturday at a car show in Arkansas, killing one person and injuring at least twenty-eight, including several children. Four people were shot in downtown Austin early Sunday. 

Wildfires in areas west of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex had burned about 54,000 acres as of last night. At least one person has been killed and fifty homes have been destroyed. One of them belonged to a relative of my wife; their family lost everything. 

And according to the United Nations, ten million Ukrainians, roughly a quarter of the nation’s population, have been displaced inside their country or fled as refugees. 

However, as we have seen across history, God’s people demonstrating God’s compassion can demonstrate the relevance of his grace and transform hurting hearts. 

How early Christians “turned the world upside down” 

When Peter and John encountered a “man lame from birth” (Acts 3:2), Peter said to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (v. 6). When “his feet and ankles were made strong” (v. 7), “all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what happened to him” (vv. 9–10). In response, Peter preached the gospel to the assembled crowd (vv. 11–26). 

When early Christians encountered those in need, those who were “owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34–35). When “the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits” were brought to the church, “they were all healed” (Acts 5:16). 

When Peter “found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed” (Acts 9:33), he said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed” (v. 34a). Luke records: “Immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord” (vv. 34b–35). 

When unwanted babies were abandoned, early Christians rescued them and raised them as their own. When slaves were marketed, Christians bought them and set them free. In a culture where women were the possession of their father until they were the possession of their husband, Christians valued women equally with men and embraced the eternal significance of their kingdom callings (cf. Galatians 3:28). In a day when Jews despised Gentiles as unclean and Gentiles oppressed Jews, Christians proclaimed that “God shows no partiality” and welcomed all into the family of God (Acts 10:34). 

The pattern of early Christianity is clear: the need was the opportunity. When followers of Jesus saw someone suffering, they intervened personally in the power of the Lord in a way that met felt needs to meet spiritual needs. They embraced every problem, every pain, every challenge as an invitation to prove the relevance of God’s love through their compassion. 

And by Acts 17:6, they had “turned the world upside down” and sparked the mightiest spiritual movement the world has ever known. 

Giving away “gas for God” 

God wants his people today to view challenges as opportunities just as the first Christians did. 

When disaster and disease strike, our skeptical culture is prone to ask, “Why did God allow this?” Early Christians would ask, “What can we do about it?” When we adopt an abundance mentality that sees every problem as an open door for God’s love and grace, we then become instruments of that grace in transformative ways and the culture takes note. 

Tillie Burgin began what we know today as Mission Arlington thirty-five years ago with a simple phone call. A woman called First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, seeking help with a bill she could not pay. Tillie met with her and promised to pay her bill. But she also asked if she could begin a Bible study in her apartment for the residents. 

That first gathering has grown to 360 Bible studies and congregations in the DFW Metroplex. In total, Mission Arlington / Mission Metroplex led 757 people to Christ last year and touched more than 350,000 lives. My wife and I have witnessed personally the transformative power of their daily commitment to meeting needs in Jesus’ name. 

Last Saturday, Pastor Brian Carn of the multi-campus Kingdom City Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, spent $10,000 from his personal finances to give away $35 gas cards to more than 300 drivers on the west side of his city. His “Gas for God” event is just one example: churches in Chicago, North Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi held similar gas giveaways. Each was reported by their local media. 

How to measure your life 

Our skeptical, post-Christian culture is not likely to be won to Christ through business-as-usual Sunday religiosity. But when we are a movement that rushes to the front lines of suffering armed with courageous and sacrificial compassion, God redeems deprivation and pain by leading its victims to his transforming grace. 

Erasmus was right: “Length of life should be measured not by the number of years but by the number of right actions.” 

How long will your life be?

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 “It’s been a joy in the midst of all this tragedy to see how God’s people have responded. . . . God’s church is operating exactly like it was intended to, to minister to people and getting them hope and to share Christ with them.” This is how Keith Townsend, International Cooperating Ministries’ director for Russia and former Soviet Republics, characterizes humanitarian efforts underway in Ukraine.

He describes churches and ministry centers that are removing their chairs and pews so people can sleep in them: “They’re housing the people, feeding the people, making sure they’re taken care of with their medical issues and things like that.” 

In related news, a fifteenth-century Romanian Orthodox monastery has opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees. Roughly one hundred people, mostly women and children, have so far taken shelter there. The archdiocese has offered hundreds of beds in monasteries and parish houses as well. 

Samaritan’s Purse is operating an emergency field hospital in Ukraine and has stationed scores of disaster response specialists in the region. I am hearing daily about other ministries and churches that are working on specific projects to assist the Ukrainian people and the millions of refugees fleeing the country. 

One more example: an American pastor in Bronx, New York, has traveled to Ukraine with a team of four others at the invitation of the Ukrainian military. He is working with the army to provide combat field trauma supplies. He says that as he serves soldiers and civilians who are “hit with a bullet or they’re hit with shrapnel,” he is also working to “provide spiritual, emotional, and psychological support and also to pray with people, to be a pastor to people, to share God’s love and to give them hope.” 

Is Putin a “war criminal”? 

When Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago, the Russian Defense Ministry said it was using precision weapons and claimed that “there is no threat to [the] civilian population.” Since that time, Russian airstrikes have hit a maternity hospital, a church, and apartment towers. Nearly one million child refugees have fled the country since the war began. Fears are rising that Russia could resort to chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. 

According to Ukrainian officials in the besieged city of Mariupol, Russian forces bombed a theater in which thousands had taken refuge, even though satellite footage shows the word children in Russian written on the ground near the theater. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia in an overnight speech of deliberately attacking the theater. A Ukrainian news platform reports this morning that Russian troops have destroyed 90 percent of Mariupol and killed thousands of town residents. 

In light of such atrocities, President Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” this week. He amplified his condemnation yesterday, calling Putin “a murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented, “Personally, I agree. Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.” 

Tragically, analysts warn that we can expect such tragedies to escalate. 

How the war “could get much worse” 

Angela Stent, a former US National Intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, writes in Foreign Affairs: Putin’s “overarching aim” is “reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War.” As a result, “the current crisis is ultimately about Russia redrawing the post-Cold War map and seeking to reassert its influence over half of Europe, based on the claim that it is guaranteeing its own security.” 

Another Foreign Affairs article warns that the war in Ukraine “could get much worse.” It explains that an “insecurity spiral ensues when the choices one country makes to advance its interests end up imperiling the interests of another country, which responds in turn.” The result can be a “vicious cycle of unintended escalation, something that’s happened many times before.” 

Scholars point to “the stability-instability paradox, in which states, stalemated in the nuclear realm, might be more willing to escalate in conventional terms.” For example, Putin might respond to economic sanctions against Russia with cyberattacks on NATO countries. NATO leaders might consider such attacks to trigger Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which states that an attack on one member state is an attack on them all, and respond with retaliatory cyberattacks on Russia. Such cyberattacks could prompt military responses leading to another world war. 

Or conflict in Ukraine could spill over its borders. Russia could attack land transfers of support into Ukraine from NATO states bordering the war zone, which could kill or harm NATO personnel and trigger Article 5. Or Ukrainian forces could withdraw into NATO countries; if Russia attacked them there, this could also trigger Article 5. 

When “I have no right to preach the gospel” 

This growing crisis is an opportunity for God’s people to demonstrate God’s compassion in the power of God’s Spirit. The darker the room, the more necessary and powerful the light. 

I was interviewed recently by nationally syndicated radio host Bill Martinez. As we discussed Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine, he quoted this convicting statement in Proverbs 24: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?” (vv. 11–12). 

In other words, you and I are responsible to know what is happening, to pray about it, and then to find ways to answer our prayers personally. When we do this, the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27) acts as the hands and feet of Jesus in our war-torn world. We demonstrate the relevance of our faith by the relevance of our service. Those who experience our courageous compassion will be marked by God’s grace at work in and through us. 

This is the model of Jesus at work. Our Savior healed bodies so he could heal souls. He opened blind eyes so he could open blind hearts. He met felt need to meet spiritual need, and he calls us to do the same. 

My friend Dr. Randel Everett is right: “I have no right to preach the gospel to a hungry person.” 

What “hungry person” will you serve in Jesus’ name today?

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