While visiting an orphanage in Oradea, FFH Founder and Leader, Lewis Thomas, gave a spontaneous challenge to our team. It was a challenge that all of us needed to hear and could stand to hear regularly. It was a message so clearly from brother Lewis’ heart and one that embodies the foundation he leads. My heart was moved…perhaps yours will be as well.

I was able to capture part of it on video and so I am able to quote him verbatim. Here is what he said:

“There is no middle ground, friends. You cannot be in neutral. You are either in need or you need to be helping those in need. We are either an orphan, abandoned and broken in (I cannot include the name of this orphanage where children starved and died under communism), on the outskirts of the village of Tinca, you fill in the blank. OR We have to be doing what we are doing. We cannot straddle the fence! I’m not judging anyone else. I’m just simply saying that as a believer in Jesus Christ you are either one in need or you have to be meeting the needs of others. You cannot be in the middle. I hope your experiences here have broken your heart and have made us re-prioritize some things in our lives.”

If you are reading this I would urge you to take a moment right now and read Matthew 25:31-46. Brother Lewis’ challenge is dead in line with our Lord. There is no middle ground. We cannot straddle the fence! There are people all around us that are in desperate need of Christ’s love. “How can we close off our heart of compassion?” (I Jn. 4). Moreover, there are millions that possess far deeper poverty…the poverty of a soul apart from the grace of Christ. One preacher often says, “the most sobering reality in the world today is that people are dying and going to hell today.” We cannot straddle the fence when there are people all around us that need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Evaluate your own life. Where do your actions place you?  Are you on the front lines taking the love and gospel of Christ to those in need? Or are you wandering somewhere in the middle? I asked about your actions because most of us know how to talk the game. Yet in reality, we’re often appropriately described by the songwriter as “fearless warriors in a picket fence…reckless abandon wrapped in common sense…having deep water faith in the shallow end…and we are caught in the middle.”

May we heed this challenge, repent of our sin, and get off the fence. “People Need the Lord.”