"Faith Apart From Works Is Dead":

I am going to be very upfront about this: If your faith isn't prompting you to do something for the Kingdom of God, I'd encourage you to reexamine what you believe. If you believe that there is a God out there who sent His only Son to die the most horrific death imaginable so that you could be with Him in His perfect presence for all eternity, and that doesn't prompt you to do anything out of gratitude and humility for Him...do you really believe any of that?

I believe that is what James meant when he said, "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." If you are not moved to do good works out of an overflow of love, then you may not have the same faith that the Bible talks about.

Let me tell you a story from my life about how some folks looking to do a little good - picking up trash - showed God's love more than anything I've yet seen in my life.


In my DTS outreach to Rome, we stayed in a church in a part of the city called Laurentina, which is on the outskirts of the city. Laurentina has a history of mafia activity and poverty, and even though it has been getting much better in recent years, it is still not the nicest place to hang out in.

One of our first days there, we decided to go spend some time in the local park, because we figured that would be the best place to encounter some of the locals on a beautiful spring afternoon. Sadly, we spent a few hours there and saw almost no one. It's a nice park, with a big grassy field in the middle which is perfect for picnics and soccer and such, but no one was there. There was, however, a lot of trash.

Later, when we were brainstorming for potential ministry ideas, somebody suggested we go clean up the park. We thought perhaps the reason no one goes there is because it's so dirty, and that if people saw it getting cleaned up, they might start to return to it. And if nothing else, it was a good way to help the community.

So, twice a week our group would split up: A few of us would go downtown to spend time with refugees and the rest would go to the park to pick up trash. I believe some of us felt it to be underwhelming work. We came all the way to Italy to...what? Pick up trash? We could have done that in San Francisco easily enough! We wanted to be evangelizing, not trash collecting!

But there were those of us who felt it was what God wanted us to do with that time, and we obeyed Him, and boy did we get to see the benefits of it! Each time, more and more people would see us in the park and get curious as to why we were doing that, or how much "they" were paying us, and (if we could communicate, which was not always a given) we would tell them we weren't getting paid, and we were doing it to help the neighborhood.

That blew a lot of people's minds. It was obvious we were foreigners, and foreigners never made it that far outside the downtown area where all the sites are, unless they happened to be staying in a hotel in Laurentina or something. So these foreign people, mostly young folks, came all the way from America to...pick up trash in a run down area of Rome? How could that be?

We first saw the fruits of our work during Pasquetta, which is the day after Easter (Pasqua) in Italy, and a national holiday. Generally Pasqua is a day for attending Mass and doing something nice at home with your immediate family, and Pasquetta is a day to get out of town with friends or family, or to have a picnic, or something outside. We decided to have a picnic in the park, and a few of the church members came as well. It was a raging success, and the most fun the park had seen in a long time.

At the picnic, many people from the neighborhood stopped by to see what was going on, many of whom we'd never met before, and others were people who had seen us cleaning up the park. When a good crowd had gathered, we performed a skit and some of us shared testimonies. We also had a face painting table set up for the children (and some adults as well). The event went all day, and many new friends were made.

From that point on, we only had a few days left in Rome, so we invited everyone to a community dinner/ send off event for our DTS at the church. Now, the church had community dinners almost ever Wednesday evening, with the intention of opening them selves up to people in the neighborhood, but they were usually only attended by church members and their families. 

However, the last Wednesday night had nearly 3 times as many people in attendance! There were some people we met at the picnic, some people who had heard about it from people at the picnic, and many who had heard about it from coming up and talking to us as we picked up trash. 

At the dinner, we shared a slideshow of our ministry in Rome, our leader shared YWAM's main goals, we had a time of worship, and a few of our students gave their testimonies. For an audience largely made up of lapsed Catholics, it was quite an experience. 

All of this was amazing, and so much of it was due to our work in the park. However, there was one encounter that I had right after the meal, when everyone was leaving, where God showed me why He had us in the park picking up trash. 

I noticed one old man who was trying to talk with my friend Anne Marie, but he knew no English, and she knew no Italian. He got one of the bilingual church members to help translate to her. From across the room, I saw her face light up with amazement, and at the end give the old man a hug before he left. She then sat down and started looking at the floor.

I made my way over to her and asked her what the old man had said. She looked up, and with tears in her eyes, told me the story.

"He came because he'd seen us cleaning up the park from his apartment, and when he heard about the community dinner, he came to see what we were all about. He said, 'I've lived my whole adult life as an agnostic, wanting nothing to do with the church, but coming here tonight and hearing you talk...' He said, 'I can see the light of God in your faces. I'm going to go home tonight and rethink everything in my life.' He said those exact words!" 

I don't know where that man is now in his faith life. All I know is God's love was shown to that man because we decided to clean up the neighborhood a bit. It's things like this that should inspire us to do good works. Not out of guilt, or to gain favor with God, but because we want to show the same love that God showed us.

Galatians 6:9 "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." 

Never give up on doing good works. 

God's Blessings,

Chris