How to Change Society

"You will be confident, because there is hope." - Job 11:18

Society doesn't want to be changed. 

It spent a long time getting to where it is.  But it's failing to show compassion for the outcast and the orphan. How does it address it's needs?  "We have people for that..."  

That's not a society that embraces change, that's the embedded selfishness of every man's heart. And I'm afraid that is what I think makes up our society.  

But I believe change can happen. It will be when you go for the heart.  Present a shining example of a heart set free in a self-sustaining, compassionate solution for the needs in your world, and you'll win hearts, and change society.

Premise:  
Society will reject your attempt to change it.

Solution 1 - I look at Sierra Club, Greenpeace, you name the organization- they generate outrage at the offense, and try to shame established entities into doing "What is right..."  Is this producing real change?  Maybe... with a hammer... I don't agree with that approach. It's angry and is simply not God's way. It may change a behavior, but it won't change society. It's not a solution. 

Solution 2 - My premise is that as a man or woman of God you have access to heaven on subjects that are near to your heart. You may acquire the eternal solution God has been waiting for you to ask Him for.  Bring that solution to the world at your own expense and at the expense of those who have assaulted heaven with you.  Implement it and watch society love it.  Because it will be the pure heart of God.

I believe if people could see God, they would see what they have always been after.  It is for the people of God to manifest heaven.  Go to heaven, and get some of it, and bring it to earth. It will be irresistible.

Sorry to say this, but if you try to convince anyone of anything, you might be a jerk and ruin everything.  Isn't that the cry of every non-believer against Christianity- the people are jerks?  But discipline yourself for godliness, acquire heaven's solutions, and bring them to the culture that so desperately needs them, and you will watch hearts melt at the goodness of God.

Society might even change a little. Just your little part of it.  But you will have brought Heaven, and that's eternal. Where it lands and what impact it has are in God's hands.  I have a hunch He'll honor it.


Here's a kid who knows how to change the world.

"You will be confident, because there is hope." - Job 11:18

You Are The Image of God

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood, and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If we want to overcome the lies of the enemy, it is not by countering them.  They are lies in their very context.  No one will win in the argument of right and wrong. That is lesser, and to engage that argument is to agree to a lesser call.  

Instead, let's have a new discussion- the only discussion-

the discussion that God started when he made mankind.

The discussion is, "What was God doing, what IS God doing in making a new being in His own image and likeness?"  Let us have THAT discussion over and over again!  What, O God, did you make when you made mankind? For I am one of them! 

I believe God made us all vessels of honor- made to be overflowed with the abundance of God Himself! 
       His creativity, 
              His compassion, 
                     His solutions that surpass the need, 
                              His miraculous healing that changes the present and the future...  

The needs of our world are where the man of faith has the ability... the calling... to land the kingdom of God.  The resulting expression will be the destruction of lesser arguments- they can only crumble to dust and be blown away in the wind of God's surpassing answers. 

The angry question:  "Look at this injustice, this offensiveness!  What are you going to do about it?"  
Heaven's answer:  "Lift up your eyes, because you are the image of God.  The answer isn't in correcting bad behavior. It is in considering the much greater identity that we all share. Bigger than being American or Russian, man or woman, black or white, Christian, Muslim or Jew. What has been soiled and slandered is not between these lesser identities, what is being soiled and slandered is the image of God, and you are the image of God, and so are your supposed enemies. This fight is a fake."

Access Heaven, O man of God. You are the image of God on the earth. Understand that more and more, and you will overcome the lies and reveal the true nature of God. This is what you were made for. Let's have that discussion over and over again- often with each other, and more often with God- your creator- the one who is expressing Himself to the earth and to the heavens. You are His choice vessel.

A New Conversation - part II

"I, the LORD, have called you to demonstrate My righteousness."  Is 42:6

The world is full of partial answers to the needs of our day.  It's full of broken systems that fall short of meeting those needs. You can feel that, even without understanding it. I believe it is only the kingdom of God that has complete answers, and it is for the people of God to understand His completeness, and acquire His answers.

This is my second post on this subject- I'm addressing one topic, but I think you can see the greater subject here.  Prepare yourself to have a new hope as you read this.

I believe Jesus is taking over the conversation about providing a place in the world for those with special needs.  By going straight to a solution born in heaven, Jesus passes through the crowd of noise and despair, and brings compassion in the way it's needed.  

My part seems to be releasing these special ones from their bonus rooms and group homes, into the marketplace as producers and bread-winners.  Running a kingdom business based around their capabilities is providing fun work for them, and hope for a community.

Our only hope

When I discovered the community of families with adult children with autism and other special needs, I was discovering a community of people awash in questions with no good answers.  There is simply no place in the world for their family members, and they are searching for someone to take up their cause.  I'm sad to say that no one in the normal channels is going to have a satisfying answer for them.  But happily, there IS hope to be found in the Love of God.  Inside the Love of God is every abundance, and every answer they are so in need of. There is no limit to His Loving answers.

If I may digress for one moment... It's like Ghana. Look at how protestant missionaries understood the Love of God, and went in and taught the people to read... so they could have the word of God, and receive eternal life, and hear God's voice, and find true hope for their souls- and their families, and their nation.  Today, look at every measure of societal success in Ghana versus it's next door neighbor Burkina Faso. Night and day. Why?  The Love of God was demonstrated in Ghana a generation ago.

Today I believe it's time for this generation to demonstrate the Love of God- 
to a community of people, in our own society, who don't have a place.  Who will go?  Who will make a place for them?  Who will change the conversation for these?

Can you see it?

I see, a generation from now, a people like the people of Ghana.  Today they have no place in the world and they're looking for crumbs that fall from the table.  But the people of God will take the love of God to them and form compassionate kingdom businesses based around the capabilities of these people who are special to God's heart.  And a new economy will emerge.

And in a generation we will see flourishing communities with special needs adults filling happy places in society. A society that has become more compassionate because someone has navigated this difficult question:  

"How can we fit these into our society?"  

The answer is by changing society, and it is only the people of God who can do this. 

No one else knows the unstoppable Love of God toward these special ones.  And who else can access heaven, and out of thin air, create the new loving infrastructure that includes them?  Even the families who are looking for answers, and who care the most, will not be the ones to lead this change.  

It is for the people of God to bring His kingdom to earth.

It is for the people of God to bring His kingdom to earth.  This is not a good work, and good people cannot accomplish it. This is a move of the Holy Spirit, and spiritual people can see it. Can you see it? Because if you can see it, you are the answer. You are the one to bring it to earth.  It is something that will change the conversation because it is from the Love of God.  

Bring Heaven

Now its time for you, man of God, woman of God.  Access heaven.  Nurture your solutions in the atmosphere of God's abundant provision and Love, and bring that thing to earth.  It will arrive saturated with eternal value and significance that you never even thought of.  There isn't anyone else ordained for this work. This is how the conversation will be changed.

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A New Conversation

"God has given each of you a gift from His great variety of gifts. 
Use them well to serve one another."  - 1Peter 4:10

I'm watching something take shape that I believe is God's making, and I like the way it looks.  A lot of people do.  It has the simple power to change the conversation.  The conversation we're talking about is on the integration of adults with special needs - people who God loves dearly - into our world.  God appears to have a strong case in this conversation. 

The old conversation was about convincing businesses to hire our people - "they're not that bad" or, "we're ALL kind of quirky, really..."  It was about finding some little thing that our people could do.  It was small ball, pleading for table scraps.

I think Jesus is taking over this conversation.

The new conversation is about building profitable (ie, market-supported) businesses around the capabilities of those with special needs.  It puts our friends- God's friends- in the center of the conversation.  Its about WHICH businesses will work for our people, in various industries or crafts. 

And by 'work' I mean things like what product manufacturing can be built around the abilities of our friends.  What other kinds of businesses can we build around our friends capabilities?  From a Thrift Store, Car Wash, or Software Testing, to regaining our manufacturing sector that's been lost offshore, we now have a new conversation about viable, special-worker-centric businesses.

Am I all alone in this new industry sector?  What social entrepreneurs will join me?  Who wants to change the world?  Who wants to demonstrate God's Love?  Who wants to bring the kingdom of God to earth?

This is compassionate business.  God's special people at the center.  Or really, Christ at the center, putting generous treatment of special people at the center of the business- at the center of the conversation.  Taking those who society didn't know what to do with, and turning them into producers and bread-winners.  That sounds like the kingdom of God to me.

This sounds like the kingdom of God to me too!