poverty on Weakness

I am mended by my sickness, enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weakness…. What fools are we, then, to frown upon our afflictions! These, how crabbed soever, are our best friends. They are n...

God welcomes all who come to him. In weakness or strength. With much, or with little. Seek the Lord, while he can be found Call on him while he is near And be confident that Jesus will look upon you w...

Here then from both James and Paul is a central witness drawn from all of Scripture: God has sovereignly chosen to work in the world by beginning with the weak who are on the ‘outside,’ not the powerf...

The Athenian general and politician Themistocles eventually alienated a large number of Greek City-States that came under their rule in the late 6th and early 5th centuries B.C. With his fleet of ship...

For some people the brokenness in these foundational relationships results in material poverty, that is their not having sufficient money to provide for the basic physical needs of themselves and thei...

[The poor have] a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard.

Almighty God, we take pride in our self-sufficiency while we look down on the weak who cannot provide for themselves. We praise others for their efforts, yet we demand perfection from our own families...

Poverty is the absence of linkages, the absence of connections with others.

We have conducted the previous exercise in dozens of middle-to-upper-class, predominantly Caucasian, North American churches. In the vast majority of cases, these audiences describe poverty differentl...

Though the West’s efforts through international aid have been well-intentioned, they have often done more harm than good. By focusing on what the poor lack, instead of what they have, the underlying m...

Poverty is no sin

The vast majority of violence oppressing the poor is not driven by the overwhelming power of the perpetrators—it’s driven by the utter vulnerability of the victims. Give the poor a strong, consistent ...

The claim here is not that the poor are inherently more righteous or sanctified than the rich. There is no place in the Bible that indicates that poverty is a desirable state or that material things a...

Consider the following summary of an interview conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of the world’s leading researchers on poverty: In a village in Indonesia we met Ibu Emptat, the wif...

A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.

Father God, too often we show preference to those who appear to have it all together, to those whom we consider complete: the self-motivated, self-made, and self-sufficient. We honor the rich and look...

Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of shalom in all its meanings.

One summer, Johnny was ministering among the poor on a six-week urban project with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Los Angeles. Part of his assignment was to spend time in a convalescent home in ...

Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.

We were poor on the outside, but also on the inside, because poverty starts in the heart.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Therefore, don’t give a man a fish.” This is the cultural mantra of many in the middle and upper ...

Leader: Heavenly Father, I confess that I have sinned against you. I have delighted my soul in other things more than I have in you. Why, then, is it any surprise to me that you feel far off from me? ...

The beatitudes paint a comprehensive portrait of a Christian disciple. We see him [or her] first alone on his knees before God, acknowledging his spiritual poverty and mourning over it. This makes him...

The lower classes of society are “not only disproportionately vulnerable to injustice, but usually disproportionately actual victims of injustice. Injustice is not equally distributed. One has to deci...

The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.

Talk to any poor person or vulnerable person and they can give you a long list of the services they have received. (editor’s note: one assumes in the West) They are well serviced, but you often have t...

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.