HOW TO KNOW GOD. If the world had 1,000

HOW TO KNOW GOD.

If the world had 1,000 people, the number who would live in a slum: 600.
Yet most of the Church’s pursuit in knowing God is centred around the activity of the 400.

JEREMIAH 22

What is the evidence of knowing God?
How can we verify a person’s relationship with God? Is it how much ‘stuff’ he has been blessed with?
Is a Church to be praised for its building and its large staff? Is God there?
Maybe.
But God is not in what we think is so important.
Jeremiah says He is to be known in the place of the poor and needy.
To best illustrate this, please go to youtube and search for the landfill orchestra and be amazed.
A poor community in Paraguay has formed an amazing orchestra that plays instruments created from recycled trash. The young musicians come from the city of Cateura, a slum that’s built on a landfill. They form a small orchestra of miraculously redeemed instruments. a cello made out of an oil can, a flute made from tin cans, a violin made from a battered aluminum salad bowl.
Basil the Great (theologian and bishop in modern-day Turkey, 4th century) wrote, “The bread you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of the person who is naked. The shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot. The money you keep locked away is the money of the poor.”
Beauty in and from the ashes. Who would have thought you could get such beautiful music from a slum.
So how do we know God?
Jeremiah says to know God is to defend the cause of the poor and the needy.
It is in this mission when we know Him. It is when we pray this mission that we speak His language. It is when we give money to this mission that we bring offerings to Him.
God is in the slum. Let’s go there.