Healer

I was given "a word," sort of, by good 'ol Jesus the other day.

First it started with just the idea of "Healer."

The Lord is the healer of all my friends who are hurting, who are broken, who have experienced painful situations, who have broken relationships.

He is the healer of me. And I have seen and experienced it first hand.

Well, all these people started coming to mind and I was just speaking "healing" over them. Praying for that healing.

Then, all of the conversations about ethical shopping and how we spend our money that I've been having with different people lately came to mind. And the same thing was "spoken over it."

"Healer."
Jesus is the healer of our broken economic system.
His new and perfect kingdom doesn't have a place for a broken, fragmented, disconnected economic system.
So he wants to make what we have whole.
He wants to connect it all. Meaning, connecting us to "it."
He wants to heal the system.

Because, remember, Jesus has inaugurated a new Kingdom. A Kingdom that is vastly different then the one of this world. And we do not have to wait till we die to see glimpses of this kingdom. It has begun. We may not see it in full right now, but if you know this man, Jesus, you are certainly part of this new Kingdom and can see it even now.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I believe the economic system is broken--according to where the Spirit has led me in my own research . . which is dependent on lots of other people's research, both Jesus Kingdom followers and non.

Note: when I refer to 'economic system' I am, in the simplest form, referring to every monetary transaction we make and everything that goes into that transaction. You could say, 'the thoughts, motivations, concerns (or lack there of), and actions that go into purchasing something.'

Or you could say, as Wikipedia does:
An economic system is the system of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services of an economy. Alternatively, it is the set of principles and techniques by which problems of economics are addressed, such as the economic problem of scarcity through allocation of finite productive resources.The economic system is composed of people and institutions, including their relationships to productive resources.

Think of all of that when you hear "economic system."

So I got this thought-image of Jesus healing the fragmentation we experience from the things we buy; the disconnect.
The whole system is broken--from food, to clothing, to cleaning supplies, to pens.
And that simply does not have a place in His Kingdom.
Things are whole in His kingdom.
People are connected to the things they purchase in His Kingdom.
"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
That is not just a poetic, spiritual little line to quote.
It is truth.
It is truth whether you know Jesus or not. Whether you've read the bible or not.

And when Kingdom people are really connected to the things they buy, unethical items/production simply will not be bought.
And the system will begin to be restored.

When Jesus looks at us and sees the way we spend our money, every single transaction we make, it is not ignored.
It is very significant to Him; it is significant to who he wants us to be; to who he is forming us into.

And just like everything else we do, he does not look at our unloving transactions and hate us for it or hang guilt over our heads. He never does that.
He looks at it and wants something more for us; for His world.
I think he looks at it and thinks, "This does not have a place in my kingdom. I will root this out from the bottom-up."
As always. With everything.

Just like the Lord gave the Israelites a long lists of guidelines to set them apart from the world in the way their economic transactions took place (as well as their sexual, legal, sanitary, etc. relations)--He has the same heart with us today!

He wants us to be a people set apart in everything--and one of those things is our economic transactions.
We don't have Numbers and Leviticus to give us guidelines today, but we have the Holy Spirit to do that. And we have Scripture to tell us about the character and heart of God, and what he cares about.

Jesus said the Holy Spirit is coming to us and it is even better than having him. I don't fully get that most of the time, but maybe one meaning is that, in complicated times like these, when it is so stickin' hard to figure out how to spend our money in Kingdom-glorifying ways, we actually don't have to worry or feel burdensome.
We have the Spirit to guide us.
We have the Spirit to weave us through the complicated, corrupt system.
We have the Spirit to help us restore the system. To help us be Jesus' light to shine on ALL the darkness in the system.
We have the Spirit to help us be God's hands and feet in a broken system that needs to be put back together; that needs only Spirit-filled hands and feet to connect the dots that have been disconnected.

Without the Spirit, how will we know what dots to connect?
Once you start getting into the murky waters, its easy to see that its broken. Trust me. But its not so easy to see how to reconnect it.
Only with the Spirit will we know which dots need to come back together and how.

And what I have found is that, as I start connecting dots with really small lines, I can already see that what we're actually doing is not just putting back together a broken system, but creating a completely new, whole, Kingdom-system.
Just like what ends up happening to us as people.
It starts out as if He is just repairing whats broken in us, but pretty soon we see that he is actually making us into a whole new creation.

And that's what I've seen in the economic system--He wants to make a whole new creation. But it doesn't have to be overwhelming and burdensome to us because its actually not us doing it. Its His Spirit moving us and guiding us. The huge change is not on us. We are responsible for seeking Him and His Spirit in our day to day economic transactions. But the sweeping change of a new system is His work, not ours.

The God of the Israelites is our same God. He cares about every aspect of our life and he has ways that work best in each micro system of our life. They work best for everyone and everything involved. Not just the "top" one, or the most powerful one, or the majority. The only way we will know what these ways are is if we are seeking His Spirit, learning what He cares about in Scripture, and seeking out what's really happening in our transactions by opening our eyes to the evidence that is out there.

In Texas?????

As most of you know, I've been involved with the organization International Justice Mission for a couple years now. Therefore I'm pretty aware of what is going on in the "sex trafficking" industry.

When I read stories about the thievery of girls' souls in Cambodia, I am sobered, disgusted, and pained instantly. But sadly, I am not surprised.

Well of course I have also "heard" that human and sex trafficking occurs here in the U.S.
But when I "hear" about it, what goes through my mind is something a long the lines of: "They must be referring to the instances when people pick up Mexicans, throw them in vans, bring them over to Texas and other border states, give them illegal work, and treat them horribly."

Well that is definitely happening. But the thing is, there's much more.

First off, my dear friend Emily (whom I should just write a whole other post about soon), has opened my eyes to the very "third world" type sex trafficking that is going on in Washington D.C. . . .and of course in many other parts of the U.S. I say "third world" simply because you don't expect things kinds of things to be happening in incredible cities like Washington D.C. or our very own Houston, Texas. You expect to hear about these things in Cambodia and the like but. . .here? Where we prize human dignity so much?? Here? Land of the free?? Here? Where sex sells and sex controls way more than we can imagine? Oh right.
Here.

Well anyways, check this article out. Right here in Houston. Straight from the Texas Monthly magazine. (yes it is long, but even someone like me who has read many articles about this stuff, found this extremely compelling and insightful, yet simple to understand.)

I really like how it captures what is happening in the heads of these women:

"While you are in this state—dizzy, disoriented—your boss takes you to a place that isn’t a restaurant or a factory and tells you to unpack your few belongings in a dingy back room. He tells you that this is where you will work to pay off your debt. You will be a prostitute, he explains, and by the way, you will be charged for room and board while you are paying off that $30,000. When you protest, he beats you, starves you, or keeps you awake for days on end. Then, just to make himself clear, he holds up a picture of your son or your parents or your sister and tears it in half. Or maybe he just says, “We hear your father has a bad heart.”

At that point, your predicament becomes very clear. You do not speak or read the language. You do not have a cent to your name. You have no idea where you are in this vast country, and you have no way of finding out because no one lets you go anywhere alone. What do you do? Most likely, you do what you are told."

Well shoot. What do you do when you find out this stuff is happening in our wealthy cities who "prize" the dignity of people. . .right here under our noses. . . .down our streets. . . .a whole new world juxtaposed against our country of equality, freedom, law, order, dignity.