Compassion: Part 1

From the Salvation Army, you're listening to Wonderful Words of Life. Welcome back, everybody, and welcome again to Captain Jimmy Taylor. Hey, I'm good to be back. Good to be back. Indeed.

We're on this new series called The Least of These. And it's special for us to have Captain Taylor back. It's hard for me to even say Captain Taylor because he was my pastor right here in the Atlanta area for some time. And he's someone that is just approachable. He's an authentic person. He's a pretty good guitar player.

I wish I could tell you you could catch him on any number of transmission CDs, but we were not able to harness his talent. I didn't make the cut. I didn't make the cut. That's right. But he really is someone who knows the Salvation Army well and serves literally the least of these. While you were here in Atlanta, you started a program that is special to us.

Yeah. When I was commissioned, Commissioner Izzy Gaither gave us a commencement speech and he said, you're going to get to your office, you're going to sit down in your brand new office. My office was a closet, but it was a brand new office. And you're going to sit down, you're going to have your bags unpacked and open your laptop and go, what do I do now? And that moment happened to me here at the Temple Corps. He said, when that moment happens, I want you to go for a walk. And so I got up on my desk and I went for a walk and I didn't know what the Lord was leading me to do. And so as I walked, I mean, the Salvation Army Temple Corps located in a little bit of a corporate office park.

But I saw an individual walk under a bridge and just in my heart, I just felt the Lord say, follow him. Which I already kind of established my uniform. I look like a cop. And so I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to go down there. They're going to take me out. And I walk, I just follow this gentleman under the bridge. And of course, I spooked him.

But there was about 30 guys under there and one lady. And I sat down and I just said, I'm from the Salvation Army. I'm right up the street. What can I do for you?

Why are you here? Tell me your stories. And one of the guys, I remember him so, so in depth, his face just looked like a map of the world.

I mean, it's just so rugged. And he said to me, I've waited eight years for someone from the Salvation Army to come here and see me. His name was Joe. I sat down with Joe and I talked with him and they said, you know what we really need? We really need socks. He said, you know, we we walk all the time. And so I said, I can make socks happen. So I went up down to the the Eckers up the street and I purchased a pack of socks. And and I came back and I gave him some socks. And I said, you know, what else?

I just want to get to know you. And they said, we're homeless, man. We always looking for something to eat. And so that Wednesday we would do our youth programs and and we'd have leftovers. And so I'd box them up and I'd take them down. And we just began to have this relationship with with these men and this one woman down there. And they stopped seeing me as a threat. They saw someone that wanted to make a difference.

Right. And they didn't see them as, you know, a drunk or a homeless person. They saw somebody who was created in the image of God and that had value and was redeemable. And so we began to just really, really minister to these guys. And this this mind or this idea came to my mind. And it was me and this guy.

He's now an officer named Captain Josh Henson. He and I realized we have some showers in a gymnasium that didn't get used very often. And these guys, they obviously were in need of a shower.

They told me they there was a creek that runs by. And they said, that's where we use the bathroom. That's where we bathe. And we'd loved a hot shower. And so we came back and we talked with the commanding officer and they said, yeah, you can use the showers. And so we just started reaching out to these guys and said, you want to get cleaned up?

No, no, no, no, nothing else. Just you want to shower. And they said, yeah. So we began to collect toiletry items with the church members.

And at first we thought, I don't know if they're going to accept this. And people would just give us stuff in droves, shampoos and soaps and even the squishy luffus. And and of course, you know, the homeless guy looking at you like, what am I supposed to do with that scrubbing? And they would begin taking showers.

I mean, something that we take so much for granted, a hot shower. These guys would come on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Josh would and I would sit down there and we'd talk with them. And we started realizing that they also had an issue. They would get out of the clean out of the shower. They'd be clean and they put on their dirty clothes. And we said, we got to do something about this. And and so we started appealing to the church folks and and we actually got some volunteers out of it. But we started donating clothes to us and we began a we'll call it a laundry ministry. They would give us their dirty clothes. We'd give them clean clothes and we'd wash them and then we'd give them the next Thursday, whatever.

We'd give them their clean clothes back and began. We became a laundromat for the homeless. And and we went from seeing something like like eight or nine guys at the very beginning to when when I was transferred out after about 18, 19 months of this, we were having 30, 40 people coming. And it just became something that was something that was so important to these men. It was more than just a shower. It was more than just maybe a doughnut and some coffee. They began to have a relationship with Josh and I. And we began to be able to really pour into some of their issues. Jimmy, that's two of the three things that William Booth started the Salvation Army with soup, soap and salvation.

I think those relationships that you were building gave you an opportunity to then speak into their lives as well as meeting them with practical things. Thank you for that vision. Thank you for being true to God's calling on your life. We began a new series last week called The Least of These, which is a series put together by Salvation Army officers, Rob and Heather Dolby. And we're praying this series is just a huge dose of empathy for the marginalized people in our society.

The ones that maybe most people overlook. Last week, the focus was on our prayer that God would help us see those individuals. And this week, we move on to compassion. We look forward to talking with Jimmy about this more next week. Thanks for joining us for this series, The Least of These, as we have a conversation around how do we serve our neighbor? Who is our neighbor?

This week, we're going to be talking about compassion. And so in Mark 2, 13, it says a large crowd came to him and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector's booth.

Follow me, Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. I love this in the same way we spoke last week about having eyes to see that Jesus, as he walks around, he sees everybody. He sees everything. That's right. And through this filter, not only of how can I how can I see so that I can move forward, but how can I see to engage the world around me? And so he sees and then he engages with a response.

Yes. And what I love about Jesus, what I literally love about Jesus is that when he set eyes on Levi, he didn't just see him at work in his tax collector booth acting all ratchety. Like everyone else in the community would be given Levi some side eye because tax collectors were not respected.

In fact, they were reviled. So Jesus saw Levi, but he saw him of all the things he could be in the Kingdom of God, ultimately redeemed. And I love that Jesus sees that.

Right. And Jesus says, hey, follow me. And we take this as this deep moment of like you're receiving your calling right now from God. Come follow me, which it is.

But also, if we just read a couple of verses after Jesus is like, come follow me because I want to spend some time with you. Let's hang out. Because all of a sudden, where are they? Dinner.

Yeah. So Jesus says, come follow me. And they end up at Levi's house having dinner together. So Jesus with his big, profound follow me is like, I want to hang out with you.

Let's break some bread together. I love that. And also like Levi catches this like divine moment where like a window opens for him. It's like the door of opportunity like opens and it's like, oh, it's a moment.

Are you going to grab it or are you not going to grab it? Because I believe like as Jesus encounters people in the world, just like he encountered me, there was so many times before I actually received salvation that Jesus was standing at the door and knocking. And I was like, oh, did not take the moment. But Levi takes the moment. And it reminds me of, I mean, your story and when you took the moment.

Right. So, you know, we all have these moments where we hear Jesus call us and say, follow me. And for me, I think I've shared my story a little bit before, but I found myself in a pretty dark place. I was homeless, living on the street for two and a half years, sometimes in shelters, sometimes literally in a sleeping bag on the street.

I was that guy that in the bus stop. And, you know, I had my moment where Jesus said, come follow me. And it was a profound moment where the Spirit of God entered my life, called me to repentance. And right from that moment, God just met me where I was at and allowed me to walk away from every single thing that was killing me, that was literally embodying death in my life and brought life.

And I love that moment. But so Levi has this moment where Jesus says, come follow me. Let me share the rest of my story, though, because there's not only this moment where Jesus comes and no longer am I homeless on the street, no longer am I addicted to heroin with a needle in my arm and experiencing this freedom. But there's also this moment for me in my story where not only does Jesus say, follow me, but then Jesus brings the body of believers to stand around me. And so Jesus ends up at Levi's house for dinner. But he's there with all his disciples.

There's like this community around Jesus. So the community that I was invited into, I ended up in Vancouver, Canada, going through a detox program at the Salvation Army. I was there for about seven to 10 days coming off of drugs. That's where I met Jesus. That's where I repented and gave my life to him. But after that, I didn't have anywhere to go.

You know, I didn't have family to go and stay with. I had burned all those bridges in my life. So I was going to have to walk out the front door of this detox center and just end up back on the street again. And those are some rough streets.

The rough streets. And I knew if I just had to walk out of that detox again and head back to the street, I knew where I would end up. And it was probably back on drugs, even though I had Jesus with me.

He called me. So this body of believers in the Salvation Army came around me and actually invited me into their community. They said, you know, when you're finished detox, where are you going to go? And my answer was, I don't have anywhere to go.

I'm just going to have to go back on the street. And so they said, no, you come with us. And they invited me into their community to live in their home. And so I get there. I took a Greyhound bus from where I was to where this faith community was in the Salvation Army. And I get there and someone picked me up from the Greyhound station and they drive me to their house, this house that I'm going to be living at in this Christian community. And when I get there, not only do I get there, but there's all these people gathered.

And it was a little bit intimidating. Like there's like 15 people. And I go in and on the table, there's like this huge feast. Like there's food just from one end of the table to the other. And I'm kind of like, what's what's going on here?

You know, this is a little bit weird. And they're like, well, we want to welcome you into the kingdom. And so we've made a feast to welcome you into the kingdom. And we've taken all the finest food, the best food that we could find and we could make. And we've just put a spread out because we want to celebrate that God is welcoming you into the kingdom. And that night I sat and ate with my brothers and sisters, the most beautiful food.

And they all gathered around and washed my feet. So in this place where Jesus called me out of darkness, you know, in the fullness of that story, truly having compassion, mercy, grace on the least of these also looks like community coming around those who are coming out of their brokenness. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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