What Serving our Local Homeless Means

Active concern for the hungry and homeless validates the reality of God in our lives. Men will glorify our Father in heaven not because of what we say only, but because our lights are shining and they have seen our good deeds (Matthew 5:16).

Concern for the hungry helps us feel the spiritual lostness of men. For if our hearts break for their temporal physical suffering, will not our theology drive us to see the inconsistency of not being broken-hearted because of their spiritual hopelessness.

Concern for the hungry creates witness opportunities. If Christian ethics means for us primarily avoiding bad behavior and staying home in our comfortable houses, we will meet very few non-Christians, and when we do, our words of witness will be weak because they are backed up with no labor of love. But if our love of Christ and his for us drives us into action to meet the needs of refugees and the world's hungry, then we will cross paths with unbelievers and our witness will have great power because it will be certified by active love.
So never play off evangelism against other biblically mandated acts of love, namely, feeding the poor and doing good to all (Galatians 6:10).

Consider what God's word says to us...

Luke 3:11, "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food let him do likewise."
Psalm 41:1, "Blessed is he who considers the poor!"
Proverbs 14:31, "He who oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is kind to the needy honors him."
Proverbs 21:13, "'He who closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself cry out and not be heard."
Proverbs 28:27, "He who gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse."
Isaiah 58:10, "If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters fail not."