Today I experienced excruciating chronic shoulder pain preventing me from doing much so I went to the grocery store to pick up some Tylenol. On the way there I prayed that God would show me someone to share the gospel with since it had been a while. As I came out of the store, a homeless gentleman by the name of Tom asked me for help because the recycling center next to Nob Hill was closed prematurely. Long story short I got to help them out materially and minister to him and his friend Anthony by sharing the gospel and God's love for them. Tom was so touched that God cared enough about him to send someone to provide for their need that he cried. I felt so blessed that God answered my prayer so quickly and gave me the opportunity to sow into their lives because God loves the homeless.
However, after I left, I realized I had forgotten to pray for their healing to show them God's love via his power. It's something I've been reminding myself to do after watching so many of Tom Fischer's videos on youtube (see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E62EgXvqfrc). But then as I walked home regretting that I didn't push further towards healing in ministry, I noticed my own shoulder pain was COMPLETELY GONE. Praise God! It's the first time I experienced healing like this and I didn't ask for it then, though I'd been praying all day for it since the pain was so overwhelming. I may have forgotten to pray to heal them, but God didn't forget to heal me
In all this I was reminded by God how much he wants us to help the poor. This is one of the glaring flaws of Witness Lee's ministry, that they deliberately avoid ministering to the poor when it's on God's heart that we do so. And then I realized, this is an argument we can also press into to when helping others to realize the truth about Lee's ministry.
God's word clearly shows he is concerned for the poor and needy. In the Matthew 25 sheep/goat judgment Jesus personally damns the goats because they turned a cold shoulder to the poor. Many people also think Sodom was judged due to sexual immorality which is true, but their original sin was that they were proud and didn't help the poor and needy:
Ezekiel 16:49
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
There are tons of other scripture to this regard I'm sure the rest of you can pull up. Lee abused Jesus' words "the poor and needy you have with you always" referring to the disciples question: "Why this waste?" regarding Mary's pouring of the alabaster flask to justify not helping the poor and needy when the bible clearly teaches elsewhere that helping the poor should be an integral part of Christian ministry. For some reason Lee was so willing to over emphasize those verses while overlooking the Apostle Paul's willingness to include helping the poor as part of his ministry:
Galatians 2:10 ESV
Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.