The Revelation of God Through Us: Apologetics with a Touch, Part 2

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Hi, my name is Michael Ramsden, President of RZIM. We are living in difficult and challenging times and we've all felt the impact of COVID-19 in one way or another. Whether that be through the economic challenges and hardship it's brought through the physical separation from loved ones to those who are now wrestling with illness.

Our prayers are with you and would like to thank you also for praying for us. In the last few weeks I've been reflecting on a few famous words in Romans 8 where it says, What shall separate us from the love of God? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

What is amazing to me is the first few words in that sentence, the first two as a matter of fact, refer to the idea of living with constraint or being hemmed in to be in a narrow place. Two words should seem to sum up so much of the global challenge we see right now. And wherever you are, whether you're with family or whether you're going and facing this challenge alone, please know our prayers and thoughts are with you. I would also like to thank all of you who have been praying for us because during this time we have seen a fresh openness to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We've recently launched a series called Take Five, five short minute thoughts of five minutes each once a day during the week to try to bring light into a situation of darkness. Some of the ASEAN live events which we have done have had audiences in the hundreds of thousands, both in Europe and across North America as well as across the world, as many tune in wondering where they can find solace, comfort, but also the promise of a new life. And we would like to thank for all of you who have been standing with us in prayer and in financial support to help us take that message to where it needs to go. We know that so many of us are hurting right now as we deal with the economic challenges, but for those of you who are able, regardless of how big or small your gift may be, please know that we are very grateful and feel very blessed to have been given the privilege and trust by you to take a message to those who most need to hear it.

Thank you for standing with us. You must ask God in your lifetime if there's a privilege he will give you to get close to a hurting community and let them see the color of your eyes. That's apologetics with a touch. Sometimes sharing the gospel is easier than acting it out, but Christ has called on us to do both. After all, apologetics should impact the whole person, not just the spirit.

Welcome back to Let My People Think with Ravi Zacharias. Everything in the moral law can be summed up in two simple statements, love God and love others. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as it sounds.

The two commands are easy to understand, but they are hard to undertake, especially in the thorny areas of the world. As always, Christ is our example. While on earth, he continually explained and defended truth. Last week, Ravi gave us the first of five steps that apologetics with a touch must include. That was our presence in proximity.

Today, he'll pick up on the second. Here's Ravi with the conclusion of his message, the revelation of God through us. Secondly, our privileged possessions. Our privileged possessions.

If you were to read 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, they are magnificent passages which the apostle reminds the Corinthian church of how much they have, 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9. That they have so much that the abundance is something that needed to be shared. You know, I was born and raised in India and we weren't very rich. We were an upper middle class family and my dad, we had a comfortable living, had a decent home and had servants and all of that. But we weren't very rich. In fact, my parents never gave me any pocket money. If I ever needed anything, I had to go to some of my buddies and I picked my friends very carefully then. And many of these guys would take me to the movies and take me out.

I never had any. My dad just didn't have enough to give us. And yet, when I go back now and I look at the surroundings, whether it's in the homes of servants or the Jamadars as we call them, the sweepers, which my mother always used to send my suitcase, was half full of things every time I went to India that my mother had packed for us to take to the Jamadars, the sweeping community there that used to come and sweep our home and mop the floors and so on and so forth. When I look at the deprivation and the lack of so many day-to-day needs in homes and in lives, you and I are swimming in the lap of absolute luxury. You know, there are 700 million people living today below the line of poverty.

Two-thirds of them are in the Asia-Pacific region. My daughter Naomi yesterday was in a home that I had asked her to go to, and she emailed me late last night and early this morning and just said, thanks for sending us there, Dad. It won't be the same again. Last time my co-writer and I were in India, Europe, last August, a fellow who was our limo driver kept driving us all over the place, and he noticed that I would stop where I was born and stop where I was raised, and I'd be telling stories, and he'd be listening to it. He understood English a little, and so he was following. Then on the last step of the day, I said, do you mind driving me to the cemetery here?

I want to go and lay flowers by my grandmother's grave. So we'd driven over, and he followed us, and when he saw us find the grave and saw me put flowers, and with my colleague there say a word of prayer, I saw him take his hat off and tuck it under his arm. And then he looked at me and said, you're a spiritual man, sir.

I said, I'm a Christian. He said, will you come to my house and pray for my family? So we got into his car and had to drive 40 minutes into a one-room home where seven of them lived, and I just took to this family so right away, and so I asked Naomi, I said, when you're in Delhi, I want you to go and visit this home and go and pray for them. So she went there. There are three little ones running around, a mother who's been widowed for 50-some years or so.

Her husband walked out one morning and never returned. There are stories like this and on and on and on. And you come out of a home like that, and you see that there's one room for seven people, and a toilet is shared by four families in the hallway, and there is no shower.

There is a tap from which water runs, and if you've got about 25 or 30 people sharing that every day, when I come back home, it's like walking into the Ritz-Carlton. We must take stock of how much we have. I know you do it, but it is a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that in this day and this age in which we live, we who live in the West, in North America, here in the United Kingdom, I actually found myself, there were days where I wished I were a little bit hungry because I saw something in a restaurant that I wanted to eat, but I was already too full. That's our life. That's our life.

And so my family and I, as I'm sure many of you have done it, have made commitments that you're going to learn to live with less and you can bless somebody's life with more. And I could give you illustration after illustration after illustration. I do most of my writing. Our colleague in Singapore is from Malaysia.

I do most of my writing in Penang, Malaysia. They're very good to me. They give me a nice room and business service and all of that, and I can eat on the side of the road. It's wonderful food. I would not take all of my friends out there, but you can get a plate of curry and rice and some accompaniments and don't look at how it is being dished out. Eat it on a banana leaf and use your hands. And so far in 33 years of travel, the Lord's not given me an upset stomach, so I keep eating that, enjoying it.

It works out very well, but there are a lot of Muslims around there. And I walk into these little side restaurants, and at the end of the week we'll put some money into the hands of the man who runs that place, and I say, you've got 10 people here. I want to leave this gift for you. Every time I've done it, the man looks at me and says, why? Why, sir? And I'll say to them, this is to show you the love of Jesus. I follow him.

And this is a cup of water to your staff in his name. They have never rejected it. They don't know what to say. Next time I come, they can spot me 10 yards away. And they all want to come and serve me. I don't do it every time.

I don't do it every time. Because I want to make sure they also understand that this is not a quid pro quo. This is something that comes at a time that God will choose and God will see as appropriate. So our presence in proximity, our privileged possessions. Thirdly, our presumptions.

Our presumptions that there is already enough going on around, and therefore there are not too many areas that we need to be buttressing anymore. There's enough out there. After the tsunami, I think it's a fact there were tens and tens of millions that were given. A lot of it still unaccounted for that has never reached its destinations. But you know, God may bring some need into your path. Be alert for that. It may be something that nobody else has taken notice of.

And in as much as you do it unto one of the least of those, his brethren, you will do it as unto the Lord. So I suggest to you that there are numerous places of unmet need. This time when I was in Bombay, my host is a man by the name of Gul Kripalani. He's a very successful businessman.

One of the large exporters of seafood around the globe. And he told me about a slum area in Bombay where there are 75,000 people living on a swamp. If you've ever been to Bombay and you've ever seen a slum, you know I could not possibly do justice to describing it.

It is absolutely unimaginable, especially when the rains come, that people actually live there. And while he and I were driving and I talked about my heartache for these slums and I wish there were more we could do, we started dreaming some dreams and talking about the possibility of actually redoing this whole slum area for 75,000 people. And this morning I get an email from him. He's already contacted two or three big givers. And the vice president of India is going to throw in 10 million, he said.

He's going to find some money and put it in. And here we are with a simple little conversation meeting a need of such enormous proportions. God gets these things done in a way. And all I say to you is there are many, many other needs in our homeland in the United States. There are needs right here.

This afternoon I took a walk and saw a man dipping into a dustbin and taking a drink and a gulp out of a half emptied bottle of milk. Some of these we can't always correct, but they are there. And I challenge you, there are presumptions. And I'll tell you why this is so critical and I always think this in terms of the culture in which I was raised. You know, if you read the whole story in the ninth chapter of John, where it begins by saying who's in this man or his parents and Jesus says neither, but this was done so that the work of God might be displayed. At the end of the chapter when his critics cannot handle the healing, they're asking him to explain who did this.

And this boy says, I'm telling you who did this and you're telling me you don't even know who he is. They say to him, what do you know? You're a sinner from birth. The very thing Jesus said that the blindness had nothing to do with. These people pin on him in the end because they do not like what his testimony is all about. You see, the pantheist, when he or she looks at suffering will ultimately dismiss it as karma. That's the way it is.

Born, you were sinned, your parents did it, you're not going to escape it. The Muslim will say, Inshallah, Inshallah. It is fascinating to notice how little Islamic charities did after the tsunami. Newspapers were talking about it. Wall Street Journal was talking about it.

USA today and yet the hardest hit country was Indonesia. And yet the Christians are there. And I'll tell you what, when you get close, they'll whisper in your ear and tell you, if it weren't for you as a believer, they would have had no hope whatsoever. The Christian arm is long and it reaches.

So our presence in proximity, our privileged possessions, our presumptions, and fourthly our priorities. When God gave the moral law in the Old Testament, there were 613 mosaic precepts. David reduced them to 15.

Isaiah brought them down to 11. Micah brought them down to 3 to do justice, to love mercy, and to work humbly before your God. In Matthew chapter 22, Jesus brought it down to 1A and 1B. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and your neighbour as yourself. Do you know, neither of those two are in the Ten Commandments. But he said, On these two hang all of the law and the prophets.

In other words, these two are the pegs on which the moral law hangs. The assumption that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and your neighbour as yourself. The words loving your neighbour as yourself actually comes from the book of Leviticus. But it is precisely the wording that Jesus uses there.

And when you can take 613 precepts and reduce them to two simple statements, to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbour as yourself, do you know what he was trying to say in the Good Samaritan story? It is not your neighbour that you love as much as the fact that you become a neighbour to people whose paths you cross. You become the neighbour to the world. And those who cross your paths see in you that neighbourliness. And the last thing I say to you is our persuasiveness.

Our confidence and proximity, our privileged possessions, our presumptions, our priorities and our persuasiveness. Let me share with you a couple of illustrations and then I will close. Some of you know this story because it really is fascinating.

You never know how these things happen. There are two or three cities in the world that I have visited often and done a lot of my writing. One of them is in the beautiful Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. When I am writing, they give me a very special deal because they have an author's wing. Many great writers have written there and I always, when I write there, present them with a book that I have written. And so they are very kind to me. They let me stay there. It is really one of the most loveliest places to stay. I have gone there about 15 or 20 times. The manager there is an Austrian or a Swiss. He has been there for 37 years, Kurt Wachtweil.

And he always calls me by my name. They know me there. Our team retreat was recently held there. They are just so good to us. And Mr. Kurt, as they call him, always when I walk in, it is so nice to have you back at your home away from home.

And they just treat you so beautifully. And about a year ago, I was visiting there because we were going to Chiang Mai, where we were helping in a home for AIDS victims, build a home there. So my daughter, the family had left and I had gone back to the hotel. I was really tired that night.

Mr. Wachtweil was standing in the lobby. He said, what brings you here this time? I said, well, we are building a home for AIDS victims in Chiang Mai. He said, you are? I said, yes. He said, have you got a few minutes? I said, yes. He said, come and sit down.

Tell me about it. So I started telling him about it. All guests coming in, he is ignoring all of them, sitting talking to me. He said, you know, I started reading your book, Can Man Live Without God? He said, one page a night is all I can handle.

But I'm going along myself. Being finished, he said, Mr. Zacharias, if you're doing this for my people here in Thailand, he's married to a Thai lady. If you're doing this for my people here in Thailand, he said, we are opening the world's number one resort in Chiang Mai.

It's called the Oriental Tara Devi. He said, I will invite the royal family. I'll invite members of parliament and high-placed government officials.

You speak to them, and we'll raise some money for you if you will come. Of all the witnessing I've done to him, nothing reached him until he knew I cared for his people. All the philosophizing, he could handle only a page a night. But building a home for the AIDS victims in Chiang Mai, that's what Vidal said, I'll give you what I have power to give you, and we'll host a dinner and raise some funds for it. This is what it is all about. If men and women can see Christ in us, do you know they really have nothing to say against him when they understand who the Christ is? It is our institutionalization of the whole thing that they have big problems with. You don't need institutions to be a good Samaritan. You don't need an organization to give to needy people. You can take a journey yourself around the globe and just warm somebody's hand with a gift and look at the eyes, and you'll know what it is you have done in a young life. I get letters from restaurant waiters in Malaysia who can barely write a sentence of English because of a little gift given to them.

They know who you are. Let me read this in closing. This came to me from New York City, a place where we have a bit of a share in supporting some needs, Covenant House. You're going to have trouble believing this letter. What I'm about to tell you is so strange and incredible. This lady says that she's writing, the director of this place, that you'll never forget it, but please understand that every single word of this story is true.

I'm really praying you'll take time, a few minutes, to read it. She came to our front door Tuesday morning dressed in dirty rags, holding a little aluminum paint can in her arms. From the second she stepped inside our shelters, she mystified us.

Whatever she did, wherever she went, the paint can never left her hands. When Kathy sat in the crisis shelter, the can sat in her arms. She took the can with her to the cafeteria that night. The first morning she ate, and with her the first night she slept. When she stepped into the shower, the can was only a few feet away, her eyes always on it.

When the tiny homeless girl dressed, the can rested alongside her feet. I'm sorry, this is mine, she told our counselors. Whenever you're asked about it, this can belongs to me. Do you want to tell me what's in it, Kathy?

I'd ask, no, not today, sister, not today. When Kathy was sad or angry or hurt, which happened a lot, she took her paint can to a quiet dorm room on the third floor. Many times on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday I'd pass by her room and watch her rock gently back and forth, that paint can in her arms.

Sometimes she'd talk to the paint can in low whispers. You know, I've been around troubled kids all my life. I'm used to seeing them carry stuffed animals. Some of the roughest, toughest kids at Covenant House have a stuffed animal. Every kid has something, needs something to hold.

But a paint can? I could feel alarm bells ringing in my head. Early this morning I decided to accidentally run into her again. Would you like to join me for breakfast, I said, Kathy?

Oh, that'd be great, sister, that'd be great. For a few minutes we sat in a corner of our cafeteria talking quietly over the din of 150 ravenous homeless kids. Then I took a deep breath and plunged into it. All right, Kathy, that's a really nice can.

What's in it? For a long time she didn't answer. She rocked back and forth, her hair swaying across her shoulders. Then she looked over at me, tears in her eyes. It's my mother, she said. Oh, what do you mean it's your mother? It's my mother's ashes, she said.

I went and got them from the funeral home, you know. See, I even asked them to put a label right here on the side. It has her name on it. Kathy held the can up before my eyes. A little label on the side chronicled all that remained of her mother.

Date of birth, date of death, name, that was it. Then Kathy pulled that can close and hugged it. You know, I never really knew my mom. I mean, she threw me in the garbage two days after I was born. We checked Kathy's story. Sure enough, the year Kathy was born, the New York newspapers ran a story saying that the police had found a little infant girl in a dumpster. And yes, it was two days after Kathy was born.

I've ended up living in a lot of foster homes, you know, mad at my mom, Kathy said. But then I decided I was going to try to find her and I got lucky. Someone knew where she was living. I went to her house.

She wasn't there, sister, she said. My mother was in the hospital. She had AIDS and she was dying. I went to the hospital and I got to meet her the day before she died. You know, she told me then that she loved me, sister.

And Kathy started crying. She told me she really loved me. I reached out and hugged Kathy and she cried in my arms for a long, long time. It was tough getting my arms around her because she just wouldn't put that paint can down. But she didn't seem to mind and I know I didn't. I saw Kathy again a couple of hours ago eating dinner in our cafeteria. I made a point to come up and say hi.

I made a point to give her an extra hug. I felt a lot like crying tonight. I cannot seem to stop feeling this way.

I guess it's this story. This whole horrible, sad, unreal mess has gotten to me tonight. That's why I just had to write this letter to you. That's the world in which we live. That's the world in which we live. And I have said it to my teammates. They know it. I've said it to Margie many times. If it weren't my calling to be an apologist, this is the place I would be.

But I've come to the conclusion for me it's not either or. I am an apologist and I want to be an apologist with a touch. And that's why we are where we are and Wellspring International was formed. But you have options in your churches to do this.

In organizations that you are in touch with that do this. Whether it's Samaritan Purse or World Vision or whatever. The important thing is that you ask God what you can set aside out of your riches and fogo very comfortably and reach out and touch the millions who are hurting. That may be the most powerful evangel to a world where there is a pain in every pew and there is a pain in every home. I believe the Lord would want us to look again at what he said when he said this. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and to release from darkness for the prisoners. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. Can you imagine when he read it in the synagogue, shut it and said, today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears. Think of the poor and the needy and the prisoners, how they felt when they found out.

That's why he'd come. That concludes this week's message from Ravi Zacharias. If you would like to purchase a complete copy, give us a call at 1-800-448-6766. Be sure to ask for the title The Revelation of God Through Us when you call. You can also order any of our resources online at rzim.org or rzim.ca for those listening in Canada. While you're online, be sure to check out our podcasts from Ravi Zacharias and the RZIM team.

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