Being Broke Doesn't Always Mean Being Poor

    When Peter and John went to the temple (Acts 3) to pray, they ran
into a man who had been crippled since his birth.  Every day his
friends carried him to the temple gate so he could ask alms or beg
from the people as they entered.  When he saw the two apostles about
to go in, he asked them for a hand out.

    Now Peter and John were no doubt generous men, but they happened
at the time to be broke.  Even though they were fishermen by trade,
they were now preachers and didn't make very much.  They did, however,
have something that was worth a far more than just a little spare
change.  They knew the power of God to heal.  As they fixed their eyes
on him and told him to look at them, they healed him in the name of
Jesus Christ.  Taking him by the hand and lifting him up, strength
came to his bones and he walked for the first time in his life.  The
beggar walked and leaped all the way into the temple praising God.

    Many today are cripples too, even from birth.  Not just physical
handicaps, but spiritually crippled.  The only thing that they know
about the church is to come to the door for whatever handouts that
they can get.  They spend their whole lives begging at the door but
never enter in.

    The temptation is to write these people off as impossible to
reach.  We want to just give them a few bucks and a sandwich, hoping
that they will move on and still we can feel that we have helped.  We
forget that God doesn't require us to be middle-class to be saved. 
There is no such thing as an impossible case to Jesus.  Jesus said
that He died for the ungodly.

    When I first came to the Lord in the early 70's in Denver, the
Jesus Freak revival was still going strong.  I was privileged to meet
quite a number of hippies who had come to know Jesus as their Lord and
Savior.  They came to church with cut-off jeans and were often
barefoot.  If there was no place to sit, they didn't mind sitting on
the floor.  Many had not yet cut their long hair or shaved shaggy
beards.  Their love, however, for Jesus was beautiful.  They were
quick to witness to anyone who would listen and if you didn't hold
your arm out, they would hug you before you knew what was happening.

    I remember those days fondly and it is my prayer that somehow God
will do it again for the wino's and bums and drifters and the homeless
and troubled poor that live, even here.  I hear so many say that the
economy is so slow that they can't help but then I remember that Peter
and John didn't have any money either.  Their economy was slow too but
they knew a Jesus that was not bound to money and handouts.  Their
secret?  They were always either coming from or going to a prayer
meeting.  We too can see people healed if we will pray and seek God
for His people.

Frank Cooke