Holy Discontent
Perhaps you're familiar with the story of Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision. Fifty years ago, devastated by the plight of orphans in China and South Korea, he wrote this sentence in the front of his Bible: "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God." Out of Pierce's mourning and brokenness grew an organization that ministers in nearly 100 countries to the world's poorest children and families.
When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.
As a church body, we have been asked the questions,"What breaks our heart? Does it trouble us that Americans increasingly see the church as an irrelevant institution?" Scripture calls us to experience the same Holy Discontent Nehemiah did when he learned that the wall surrounding Jerusalem as still in disrepair. In many ways the church in America today, like the ancient wall of Jerusalem, is broken. And like Nehemiah, we have been called to mourn and to fast and to pray.
