When most people hear the word poor, what comes to mind is a person with no money, however there is a more serious meaning of poor.
Jeremiah 5:3 says, ?O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return. Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for they know not the way of the LORD, nor the judgment of their God?.
To be truly poor means not to know God. Not to be a partaker of the riches of Gods grace. Another description of a poor man can be found in Ephesians 2:12 - Without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. This is the true meaning of poverty.
The good news is Jesus came for the poor, for Luke 4:18 says ?The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.
We hear sermons and get letters through the post to feed the poor with material things, but what are you doing about helping the poor know Christ. It is terrible to be without God in this world, yet many believers cannot be bothered about lost souls all around them. To introduce a person to Jesus is to give a person true riches.
Are you making any effort to give people the true riches in Christ?
Sometimes people intimidate us, but the honest truth is, whosoever does not know Christ is poor, very, very poor.
Proverbs 11:30b says that ? He that winneth souls is wise?. Let us recognise true poverty , arise and do something about it. We have His Word and His Grace. Lets allow His Love in our hearts, to move us to have compassion on the poor. This should bring action on our part.