Jackie Pullinger emphasizes the universal call to share the love of Jesus, urging believers to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. She challenges the notion of compartmentalized ministry, asserting that every Christian is called to engage with their neighbors and the needy, demonstrating God's compassion through action. Pullinger highlights the importance of seeing the needs around us and responding with kindness, as true compassion is rooted in both revelation and action. She shares personal stories of how simple acts of kindness can lead to miraculous transformations, reinforcing that we are saved to be kind and to share the good news of Jesus. Ultimately, she calls for a shift from waiting for organized ministries to taking personal responsibility in reaching out to those in need.

We spoke yesterday from Mark 3 that the Lord called those that he wanted to him, that they might be with him and that he might send them out. So this is a hundred percent whether it is to be to another town, another country, another continent or to remain in this land who so desperately needs the love and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. But it's not an option. So I've never agreed with some go and some stay. We are all called to go, those who've come to him, to be with him. But this day we are talking about how we may begin to go and it's actually, the good news about scripture is Jesus is good news and everything's possible. It's, this is not hard. Everything gets very hard once you start talking about ministry. I'm not very good at that word. People keep coming and saying, what ministry are you doing now? I say, no, I don't want to talk about ministry. I want to talk about my life and God. I don't have a ministry except the only one I can see worth having, which is that of reconciliation with God and man. But I don't have a ministry and I think one of the problems that many of us have is we've got so compartmentalized and I meet people that say, our church doesn't have a ministry with the poor. Well, you've all got a neighbor. And the oldest and first missionary strategy came from Jesus. I'm not sure we've done it yet, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your strength and your mind and to love your neighbor. That's it. It's not more complicated than that. And if we all did that, the world would already have been reached. The problem is we're waiting for ministries to do it. And our job, when we've come to the knowledge of a sweet Savior, he counted not his own life, but allowed it to be taken for us. This sweet Savior says, will you now share this good news? He counted not his life and he asks us to demonstrate his love. So the scripture I was given from Micah says, this is what the Lord requires of us, to act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with God. Now the word mercy or compassion, if you like, is a very good word and I could find it 47 times in the scriptures. But you probably know that when they came to translate the authorized version, the King James Version, into English, they could find no English word for compassion. Compassion is not a weak word. Here's a scripture in which compassion is mentioned. This is one of the first missionary journeys that Jesus sent his disciples out on. This is in Matthew. He went through all the towns and villages, this is chapter 9, 35, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom. It's always good news, by the way, never good advice. And healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. And then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. This word compassion is an extremely gutsy word. And by the way, in scripture, it is connected with the guts. It's connected with the bowels, if you like. When Jesus saw the crowds, he was filled with compassion. Now, this pity is not the right word because this is not, oh, look at those poor people there and I am here. Compassion is when your guts are wrenched and overturned. There was no word until they translated the Bible. There was no word in English. It belongs to the heart of God which he has given us. And whenever you find this word compassion, I think there are two things that always seem to occur with this word compassion. One is Jesus sees. He sees what men do not see. I don't know how well aware you are of some awful, awful poverty facts but I carry this book around with me to remind myself. One in every second child in the world lives in poverty. Every second child. It's one out of two. In the year 2003, 10.6 million children died before they reached the age of five. That's the same as the population of France, Germany, Greece, and Italy. And you think they've got troubles in Europe. Those are children that never even grew up to a life. The number of millions in this book that I carry around is a lot to do with water. So I very much hope that if there are young people here today who are wondering what to do at college, which for some reason everybody seems to be going to today, but do study something that you're going to use, please. So what is good? Because there isn't enough. And every day 20,000 or 30,000 children die for lack of water. It's diarrhea. It's not necessary. It can be prevented. This is unnecessary death. And they haven't even heard those same children, by the way, of a savior. Because I've had a look to see where the people are thirsty physically, where there isn't enough water. It's the same places where they're thirsty spiritually. They're the same places. The same people who are dying of physical thirst are dying for lack of a savior. It's the same people. There's enough water, my book tells me, just in the world, just as there is enough of God's heart for every child in the world. The problem is how it gets from one place to another. That's the problem. And so many times we've prayed because we pray very often at the other end. God, why is it that a few people have got so much and so many people have so little? The strange thing is the people who've got the most are Christians. I mean, we have enough for the world. We've got enough of God's heart. We've got enough resources if we will get them from here to there, preferably on foot, not video. Today, everything's electronic. But if Jesus could have saved the world by sending a DVD, he would have. Instead, he sent his son physically, and that is how we go. Instead of a text, there's something about being with him in the flesh, which John and Peter all wrote about. We beheld his glory. He dwelt with us for a while. Our eyes have seen him. Our hands have touched him. He went camping with us in the flesh. We have a hungry and a thirsty and a dying world longing for the resources. This is the picture that God showed us, by the way, as we're praying, because we have a strategic prayer as to why so many people have so much. We don't appeal for funds, but we don't understand why things don't get shared. This is what God showed us. There's a whole lot of happy Christians on a lake, in boats, playing around. They're having a great time. They're having a very nice time. They're not mean at all. They're very kind. They probably have worship services. And then there's a little stream going down the mountain, because they're quite high up, and it's just a little water. At the bottom of the mountain, there are hungry, dying people. And this is what God showed us. Don't blame the people at the top. They don't know about the people at the bottom. They haven't seen. When we meet this word compassion in the scripture, in the New Testament, when it's Jesus, it's seeing. And I ask that God opens our eyes, and opens the eyes of those who've come to know Jesus, to know that what we have is to be shared. We're not here just to enjoy tastes of heaven, and to water sport with one another. We are here to get what we have to those who've not had a drop. That's why we're here. And it will be through kindness. This is how it starts, with compassion. Because when I meet the word compassion, it's to do with seeing, which I call revelation. It's also to do with action. Because you'll never find this combination of Jesus being racked, and churned, and guts upside down, without him doing something. So the leper says, if you will, you can cleanse me. And it says Jesus, filled with compassion, says I am willing, and healed him. It wasn't an emotion. It was an action. The seeing, the gut-wrenching, because he would not that that man was dirty. He was willing for him to be clean, as he is for every man in this world. He was churned with emotion. In 1 John 3, 16, it says, this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions, not many material possessions, but if anyone has material possessions, so that's all of us. If anyone has material possessions, and sees his brother in need, see it's to do with seeing, but has no pity on him. The word is compassion. How can the love of God be in him? I had a friend who used to worship with us. He was a doctor, and he came to me once, and he said, Jackie, will you lay your hands on me, and pray that I have compassion for the poor? And I said, no, it doesn't work like that. You know, I cannot impart compassion. You actually get it when you go out there. You don't get it here, but I said, I will, I'll pray for you anyway. So, I prayed the King James Version. So, I prayed for him, and I said, dear Lord, open the bowels of his compassion. Gutsy. He had diarrhea for three days. Quite right. We have a constipated church. We gather together, and we say, more, Lord, more, Lord. The way you get more is by giving out. People have got it all backwards. Where do you go for filling up, Jackie, they say. I say, no, it's the opposite way around. You give what you have, and you get filled. That's how it works. It's not you've got to be hugely full. Except it's sort of like a water wheel. It sort of goes, you know, I get full of him, and I give out, and I get full of him, and I give out, and I get full. I don't run out. So, we are to share the kindness of the Lord. Let me share from Exodus how this first happened. What happened was that Moses had seen miracles. Moses, who'd been called by the Lord, as he has called many of you yesterday, and then he sees the miracles of God with a mighty outstretched arm. He sees the parting of the sea and the crossing over into the desert on his way to the promised land. Moses then goes up the mountain in chapter 24, and it's a quaking mountain. It's like a volcano full of smoke and rumblings, and the people do not want to go near the mountain because it's Moses stayed up there a long time in the presence of God, and he came down with the tablets, and the people had so quickly built idols. So, he goes up the mountain again, and here in chapter 34, this is what Moses says to chapter 33. This is what Moses says, verse 13, if you're pleased with me, teach me your ways. He knows the power of God. Now, he wants to know the ways of the Lord, and the Lord says, my presence will go with you. And Moses says, it's not worth going if your presence doesn't go with us, but this is what I'd like you to do for me. He wants Moses to know the ways of the Lord, and he wants to see God's glory in verse 18. Show me your glory, and the Lord said it would kill you. It said, that's why I'm wearing glasses, which turn a bit dark up here, because the lights are too bright for me. And the Lord says, my glory would kill you. You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and loathe, but I tell you what I'll do, says the Lord. I will let my glory pass before you. And he talks about mercy. I will have mercy on whom I'll have mercy, verse 19. I'll have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So he says, because my glory would kill you, I'm going to let you hide in a cleft of the rock. Now, imagine that God is very, very big. So he's very big, so he's got very big hand. So he says, I'm going to put my hand over you, and I go to cause my glory to pass before you. So all Moses got to see was a bit of the glory of God, a little bit of his back view as he passed by. And this is how the Lord announces his glory in verse 6 of chapter 34. As he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. After the miracles, after the noise, the kindness, the compassionate God passed by. And this is why, for those of us who now know that we called to him and that he's going to send us out somewhere, the easy thing is now, the easy thing is, this is all we are to do with the rest of our lives, is to be kind. That's it. So everyone can do that. Of course, you can't do it if you don't know God's kind. But if you've tasted a little bit, that's all we are to do. And if we will, it's just so simple. If we will, from time to time, there'll be miracles too. By the way, if you haven't seen any miracles lately, you should go and preach the gospel because the promise is that they'll follow us, signs and wonders. So you better get going. This is not, you know, it's a very strange word people keep using these days, called anointed. I don't quite understand that, but anyway, because I think we're all anointed. If you haven't seen signs and wonders, they're the promise. Go preach the gospel and signs and wonders will follow you. Okay, so do it. And I'm not convinced signs and wonders are for conferences, you know. So it's sort of wrong place, you know. And gold teeth and all that, go to a place where people have no dentists and pray for their teeth, you know. Go and do the stuff where people are hungry and thirsty, where you need a miracle, because without the miracle, which might be, of course, you giving your own lunch, but without a miracle, they may die of hunger. And I really hope you will find yourself in places where they're hungry. We are saved to be kind. That's what Ephesians 2 says. From unregenerate to redemption for a purpose. It's what Titus says. We are saved, not by good works, but to do good works. And that's what Peter and James and John were arrested for, you know, in Acts 4, when they had healed the man who had been born lame, who had held out his hand for money at Beautiful Gate. And Peter said, silver and gold, we have none, but we'll give you what we have. By the way, you must always give. You understand this? Never, never, never, never refuse anybody who's asking. Never. Always give. You don't have to give them what they're asking for, but you must not pass by. Otherwise, your own heart gets hard and dies. And if you ask the question, oh, well, there are so many hungry, so how can I give to everyone? Good question. I would suggest you go on fewer journeys. We're not supposed to sightsee the poor. We're supposed to help the one we see. So, it's possible. That's my neighbor. That's where we start. Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, the secret things belong to the Lord. The revealed things belong to us and our children. What is revealed? It's revealed through Scripture that I am to be kind. The mysteries, I'll leave for him to reveal to me from time to time, but I can be kind. So, I don't have to lock myself up for a month praying for the purposes of God. I can start by being kind to the man who collects my rubbish or the person in the bread shop. By the way, my friend just now, while we were worshiping, her ear got healed. Yeah, just while we were worshiping, it all got heartened. Where she was all blocked up just came off. So, you know, when you go to the bread shop, are you ready to pray for the bread seller? You have to be ready on every occasion for these miracles. You can do it all the time. Everybody wants to get prayer. Hardly anybody's going to refuse you. Everybody's got a family problem, a work problem, or a health problem. So, I have a friend called Vic, if any of you know him. He says, if it moves, pray for it, you know. So, just get in the habit, you know. I see you. Is anything wrong with you? Can I pray for you? Oh, it's all right. It's all right. Okay, fine. Well, I'll go outside the shop and pray for you. Do it, do it. That's at least some action involved. But the kindnesses is when Peter, having been arrested and thrown into prison in Acts 4.9 says, are we being arrested for an act of kindness? His act of kindness was healing a man who'd been born lame. Instead of giving him what he asked for, silver and gold, which should have been of temporal use, he gave him something which enabled the man not to need to beg. Much better. So, you see, you can always give. Never refuse anyone who's asking. Just say, God, what is it they really need? And at the very least, pray. Then your heart remains soft, and it's as much for us as for them. Never refuse. So, we have wonderful stories of how God has used us, and there's a bunch of people sitting there with me who've helped us in Hong Kong over the years. Some of them are on their way back. Of how by doing ordinary acts of kindness, God changes lives. And by the way, they're worth doing anyway. Years ago, I went to visit a lady called Mrs. Chan. And her son was a drug addict, and he never really came to Jesus. He still hasn't. His Chinese name is Beng Gong. He's Biscuit. And I used to say to Biscuit, could I visit your mother? She sold herbs in the market, and it was an illegal stall. So, she was always getting fined by the hawker control. So, she had to go to court and waste a lot of time. And she made maybe the equivalent of about a pound a day. I have in this terrible book of hunger, a little nine-year-old who makes a pound a week in India, working 18 hours a day. She made about a pound a day, but because of arrests, she was often fined that much. And so, I was concerned about her. And he said, no, don't visit her. She's an idol worshiper. Actually, he didn't want me to visit her because he took the little money she had. He was very mean. I know many drug addicts who beat their mothers. And the mothers only cry at night when nobody knows. So, one time, Bengong got arrested. And so, I found out where her mother lived. She was in the walled city. And I took a young man with me who'd come to know Jesus. Not very well, but he had come to know Jesus. And I found Mrs. Chan. She just, all in her house was just a bed. There was not room for anything else. But she was dying because her son was in prison. And she, if your whole life is in your son, what else have you got? And she had a bad chest complaint. And she had decided to lie in bed until she died because there was nothing to eat and no one to live for. So, what would you do? I said, Mrs. Chan, may I pray for you? She said, what do I have to do? And I said, oh, no, no, no. You don't have to do anything at all. Just close your eyes and Jesus will come. Now, when we preach the gospel, we often do it like that. We don't tell people about him before they've met him because he's better, we've found, at introducing himself. So, we don't say this is what he's like. We say, would you like to meet him? And then, oh, okay, close your eyes and he will come. And he does, of course, because he wants them to meet him. It's called revelation. They open. I want, I mean, three of us in agreement, so this is a winner. So, Mrs. Chan closed her eyes and I pray silently. I'm praying in tongues silently. So, if you do have this gift, practice. It's really not very helpful to spit all over somebody. Don't do that. Not attractive. So, if you use it for intercession, do it silently, please. If you speak in tongues, do it audibly and have an interpretation. Otherwise, you know, everything's messy. So, I'm interceding for her and I watch her chest and she's breathing very deeply and I said, oh, Mrs. Chan, how are you feeling? I learned that in California. And Mrs. Chan said, oh, I feel very comfortable. My chest feels better. And I said, that's because Jesus is the son of God and he can touch you and take your chest pain. That's why he came to the earth. He put your chest pain on himself. And I said, you know, God understand how you feel because he lost his son. Will you believe that Jesus is the son of God? Well, when he's just touched you, you will. So, she said yes. And will you believe he rose from the dead? Now, this bit is always easy because if you've just met him, then that's not a problem. So, yes, believe. Okay. Would you like to follow him, Mrs. Chan? Well, he said, she says, who else? Nobody else ever cared about my son. So, she told him she would like to follow him and she started a new life and her chest was healed. And then we did what, we boiled bones. Chinese like very much to make soup. So, we bought bones to boil to make soup. And we also bought some very expensive brands, chicken essence. So, you see, we will do the spiritual. We will do the miraculous in God's mercy and we will do the ordinary. And so, after that, I said, oh, Mrs. Chan, I'll come back and visit you in a day or so. So, she's got enough soup for a day or two. Then I came back to visit her and she said, now, she said, she'd thrown out her idols without me asking. She said, those idols never helped my son. So, but she announced, I have to be baptized. Now, I had not mentioned this. So, I said, where did you get that from? Well, she said, uh, last night I was watching the TV. Now, she lives in the wall city and she had this 30-inch screen and it didn't work. I mean, most of the time in wall city, there wasn't electricity. And so, this TV never worked, but she was watching it. And she said, across the screen walked this beautiful man in a long white robe. And he was walking up a mountain and it had very lovely flowers on the mountain and it smelled very nice. And the Lord walked up the mountain and he held out his hand and he said, Mrs. Chan, will you follow me? And she said, yes, Lord. And he said, be baptized. So, I often think about that story. What was it that brought the miracle? Was it the bones or the chicken essence or was it just that we went to visit her when she was in grief over her son? Everyone in this world with a problem will be open to your praying and it's your opportunity through an ordinary act of kindness to see what the Lord will do. Years ago, we had a friend in India and we've now got two teams there. And he heard about these acts of kindness. So, he was a pastor of a Baptist church. So, he encouraged everyone and we encouraged them. This week, do an act of kindness. Now, I can encourage you to do this. It's very easy. And a few weeks later, they came back and started reporting. One lady said, I am sharing ice cream with prostitute. That's all. No, it wasn't. I'll give you an ice cream if you come to an evangelistic meeting. I don't like it when it's that way around. You know, give them the meal first. I don't like it the other way around. You've got to sit through my preaching, then you can eat, you know. Not nice. But I mean, maybe the meal is the gospel. Somebody else said, there are lepers coming and they speak my dialect. And I thought the leper, when they are ringing their bell, I will offer the daughter of the leper, would you like to come with me? Choose material for your sari. So sweet. And the pastor himself, such a very special man. He had a congregation which met in his house. And he and his wife were so sweet. They used to give me their bed and they lived in such a tiny place. And they slept on the floor. But he also had a job in the docks. And he, on the way to the dockyard, he had to take two trains. And he thought he would do his act of kindness in the middle of the train stop. So he got to know a whole lot of people. In India, many people sleep in the train stations. And there are all these poor people. And one lady kept saying, would you please visit my husband? Would you please visit my husband? He's very sick. But he lived just behind the station. And my friend said, I'm so sorry, but my train is coming. I don't have time. And after some while, he thought, maybe I'll change my train time. And so he came to the lady and said, now I can visit your husband. I'm going to take a different train. And she said, you're too late. He's just died. And my friend put his face in his hands and he wept. And he wept for 30 minutes. And when he put his head up, there was a whole circle of men weeping. And from that day forward, he could do anything with those men. What had he done? He did what he could. He wept for them and for their friend. Nobody had ever done that before. They had so many people coming to know Jesus. They had healings, little babies who'd never sat. The age of two, he went every day with medicine, with milk and with prayer until the baby could sit and then walk. They had revival. He said, people are coming to me now. I'm on platform one. And platform two is coming. It's very simple. And he invited us to go, our drug addicts. What do we know? We don't know how to speak Indian dialects, but we do know how to worship. So our guys went and they worshipped on the platform. And as they worshipped on the platform, two Hindu men, drug addicts, walked by. And as our guys were worshipping, they actually saw Jesus. It's revelation. They saw Jesus. And then they went to live, of course, with my Indian pastor friend, because how can you say God loves you and leave someone in the street? I find it difficult. I'd rather not say God loves you than say it and leave them. So then they put all these people coming to Jesus and all these people coming off drugs. Did we do the miracle? No. We just had the fun of going in there to worship and being there when the Holy Spirit revealed Jesus to two men who were in bondage, who wanted to hear good news. This has been our privilege and this will be yours. It's doable. So many times, so many times I pray this prayer and I prayed it for you. I pray Ephesians 1 and I pray Ephesians 3. It's about the spirit of revelation. And I say, dear Lord, whatever I'm saying, may they hear you. Because, you see, the scripture says God is pleased to use the foolishness of preaching. And I think people are converted. They come to Jesus, not because of the preaching, but despite it. God uses it, but he's doing something else while it's going on. Nobody understands one, two, three, four from the preacher, do they, except the preacher. But what, you hear the average conversion story. I have no idea what the preacher says. I didn't know what he was talking about. He called people forward. I wasn't going to go, but I find tears streaming down my cheeks. It's the average conversion story. The spirit of revelation, God is doing something else that our brains don't figure out. It's called the spirit of God touching the spirit of man to make him alive. It's quickens him. That's what I pray for. That where I go, God will give me eyes to see who he sees and God with the spirit of revelation will cause them to see him. And as I go, I must do the ordinary and the kind. And as I do the ordinary and the kind from time to time, there are miracles too. And you will be part of that. So stand, please. This is worship leader and one or two other people. We're going to ask you if you would like to spend your life being kind. Well, of course, everybody's going to say yes, because this is only by the way, if you've tasted the kindness of the Lord, nobody must do this out of guilty conscience. You know, it puts judgment on people, not good. If you know he's kind, if you know he's forgiving. Romans 2 verse 4, do not show contempt for the Lord. Do you not know, do you not know, he says, that it's the kindness of the Lord that brings people to repentance. And that will be seen in the way we treat them. So just right now, forget all the ministries that you're aiming at. It'll be very good to learn about some of them, but don't aim for the ministry. Get his heart. And long before you've joined a group or started a program, this is what we share with a hungry, dying and thirsty world.