Haiti has been declared by some poverty watch organizations as the poorest country in the world.  So you may say, no problem let’s give them lots of stuff, problem solved, case closed…they will love you for it and you will feel good about yourselves too.  Sounds easy but this method has been tried around the world for decades with little progress in many impoverished countries.  Hang in there with me while I try to explain why this is so important for our family to get this right.  If we don’t, we are just spinning our wheels, hurting more than helping.

What is true poverty?

Due to the nature of the fall of man, every human being is subjected to poverty in the sense of not experiencing relationships in the way God intended them to be enjoyed.  Everyone suffers from 4 major relationship downfalls.  How much money or how many possessions one may have is irrelevant, we all suffer from true poverty but we experience it differently.

Poverty of intimacy

An educated American may experience this poverty by denying God exists, by explaining God away with science or replacing God with materialism even if he says he’s Christian.  On the other hand a poor Haitian may worship an object or spirit missing intimacy with the one true God.  See where I am going here?

Poverty of being

We may have a god complex.  The poor would have low self-esteem.

Poverty of community

We may be self-centered.  The poor may be exploited and abused.

Poverty of stewardship

We may lose our sense of purpose, be lazy or a workaholic, suffer from materialism. For the poor the ground is cursed by evil spirits.

We need to stop looking at people as haves and have not’s.  We need Gods eyes to see people the way He does.

We ask for prayer today for eyes that see people as God sees people, image bearers of the Creator, equally broken, equally loved by God, both in need of a Savior who can restore what has been ruined.  Pray that we can repent of the god complex implanted deep within our western thoughts and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide our hearts.