if there is no God who loves us,

if there is no way to know God and experience His love for us,

if there is no way to spend eternity with Him,

if there is nothing more to our existence than what we see around us and the unavoidable finality of death,

then our efforts would amount to little more than enhancing the quality of a few lives before they inevitably pass away. Which would seem like a monumental exercise in futility.

But there is more. There's so much more.

God loves each one of us and yearns for us to experience the joy of knowing Him. But our sin has separated us from God. So out of His love for us, God provided a way for us to restore our relationship with Him.

God became one of us and revealed Himself to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By His voluntary death on the cross, Christ paid the ultimate penalty for sin -- death -- to pay the penalty for our sins, having lived His own life without sin. When we put our faith in Christ, He credits that payment to our account, our sins are forgiven, our relationship with God is restored, and we can experience the joy of knowing Him, now and in eternity.

God's love extends equally to all people. Throughout His ministry, Jesus demonstrated a deep compassion for the poor and the oppressed, the sick and the outcast. The untouchables in Calcutta, the child prostitutes in Bangkok, the AIDS orphans in Zambia, the street children in São Paulo ... God's heart breaks for them, and He longs for them to know His compassion, mercy, and love.Through us.

If we know God and have a relationship with Him, then He lives in us and His love dwells within us. Our hearts reflect God's heart. Those whom He loves, we love. When His heart breaks, our hearts break. "If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." I John 4:8-12.

If someone is in need, and you love them, what is your response? Do you simply tell them that you love them, and ignore their need? If you love someone, and they are hungry, you feed them; if they are homeless, you give them shelter; if they are sick or in prison, you visit them.

So if we know God and His love dwells within us, we will love those whom He loves -- including the poor, the outcast, the prostitutes, the drug addicts -- and we will actively seek to meet their needs. This is part of God's design and purpose: that when we do so they will see, not our love for them, but God's love for them.

A slogan that has become popular in Christian circles is "WWJD … What Would Jesus Do?" What would Jesus do? Jesus did not simply tell people about God's love for them. Jesus taught about God, then He did what God would do. Jesus professed His love for others, and then He did what love requires. Jesus taught about the mercy of God while bringing God's mercy to bear on the circumstances of life. Jesus taught about the love of God while demonstrating God's love to the poor, to the sick, to the outcasts. Jesus' actions proved that He was who He claimed to be. Likewise, our own actions show whether we are who we claim to be.

If we are genuine followers of Jesus - if we know Him and have a relationship with Him - then we will love those whom Jesus loved, and we will do as Jesus did. We will tell others of God's love for them and of our love for them, and then demonstrate that love by caring for their needs: feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, caring for the orphaned. James writes, "If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,' and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Faith, if it has no works, is dead." James 2:15-17. No matter what we say, if our lives do not reflect the deeds of Jesus, people will not recognize Jesus in us and they will look elsewhere in search of truth.

Children who are orphaned or abandoned, who live on the streets with no one to care for them, are among those who are at the center of God's heart. Such children are particularly vulnerable and desperate, and the Bible repeatedly speaks of God's special concern towards them:

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress …" James 1:27.

"A father to the fatherless … is God in His holy dwelling." Psalm 68:6.

"You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more." Psalm 10:17-18.

As stated by James, if our faith is "pure" - if we are genuine followers of Christ - our hearts will reflect His heart, and our love will be His love. Since orphans and street children are at the center of the Father heart of God, they will be at the center of our hearts as well, and we will love them passionately and unconditionally, the way God loves them.

Love requires action. We must be more than teachers of the Word, we must also be doers of the Word. Love requires giving these children a home and providing for their needs … that they may witness the love of God toward them and, ultimately, experience the joy of knowing God themselves.

Which is the deepest longing of the heart of God.

Why We Do It: Compassion As Christians, we have been commissioned to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ. Stated from a different perspective, Jesus established the kingdom of God among us - a present reality, though not fully manifested - and God uses us in the advancement of His kingdom in the world today. There are three attributes of God that are particularly important in understanding the ministry of Jesus and the kingdom of God: compassion, justice, and mercy. Compassion is what motivates the ministry of Jesus and the work of the kingdom; justice is that which is accomplished; and mercy is what makes that compassion and justice available to everyone who is need. Compassion was fundamental to the ministry of Jesus:

Matt. 9:36-37: "Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest." Compassion was the motivating factor behind Jesus' preaching the good news of salvation (missions and evangelism).

Matt. 14:14: "When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick." Compassion was the motivating factor behind Jesus' healing ministry. Matt. 15:32: Jesus said to his disciples, "I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with me now three days and have nothing to eat, and I do not want to send them away hungry." And so with seven loaves and a few fish, Jesus fed the four thousand. Compassion was the motivating factor behind Jesus feeding the hungry. And so the compassionate heart of God was the motivating factor for each aspect of Jesus' ministry: the proclamation of the gospel (preaching the Word) and the demonstration of the gospel (healing the sick and caring for people in need). It was this same compassion, aroused by our helplessness in sin, that motivated God to become one of us in the first instance - that through Jesus and his death and resurrection, our relationship with God could be restored. The compassion of God is foundational to the kingdom of God. We cannot have a passion for Christ without having the compassion of Christ.

What is compassion? Compassion is not merely thinking, "I have an obligation to help that person." Compassion is a deep feeling that is aroused when we see someone crying, hungry, sick, or hurting, and it stirs us to act on that person's behalf. The distinction is critical. Compassion will motivate us to action in situations our minds would tell us to avoid: when we see people in need that live in a community where we might fear for our physical safety. Compassion will cause us to persevere when our minds would tell us to give up: when an alcoholic or a drug addict keeps going back for another drink or another high. Compassion will move us to help someone even when our own finances will be adversely affected: when we pay rent for someone who has just lost her job, not knowing how we will then be able to pay our own rent. God is not looking for thinking that is of this world -- He wants our hearts to reflect His heart. And that's the importance of compassion.

Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan offers an incredible illustration of compassion. Two very religious men, a priest and a Levite, saw a beaten man laying at the side of the road and walked around him, even though we would have expected such religious men to offer help. Instead, a Samaritan man helped him. What was the difference? Jesus tells us in Luke 10:33: "A Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion." All three men had various reasons not to stop and help the beaten man, the Samaritan most of all, considering the traditional enmity between Jews and Samaritans. But because his heart was moved with compassion, the Samaritan crossed over racial, ethnic, and religious barriers, and gave the wounded man the care he needed. Because of his compassion, Jesus held up the Samaritan man - not the religious men - as the example for us to follow.

Sometimes we see so many needs around us, so much desperation in this world, that we become overwhelmed and desensitized, and our hearts become callused. Whenever our hearts stop breaking when we see someone in need, we need to take our hearts before God and ask Him to break our hearts afresh and fill our hearts with His compassion. This is the starting point for carrying out Jesus' ministry.

Why We Do It: Justice

Justice - without question - is one of the most significant themes in the Bible.

Justice has many different aspects to it. When we use the term "justice," we often think about punishing someone for their wrong behavior. But when someone is harmed by another person or is disadvantaged by an unjust system or society, justice includes restoring that person and making them whole again.

The way in which God deals with widows and orphans illustrates this point. In Exodus 22:22-24, God says, "You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you afflict him at all … I will surely hear his cry, and my anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword."

But God does not stop there - He also delivers and restores the one who is in need of help. David expands on this aspect of God's justice in Psalm 146:7-10, "The Lord executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry … sets the prisoners free ... opens the eyes of the blind … raises up those who are bowed down … supports the fatherless and the widow." All of these things consist of accomplishing justice.

And so "justice," in its broadest sense, might be defined as "to make things right again" or "to put things back the way they should be." In this sense, accomplishing "justice" is one of the overriding themes in all of history.

There are two big bookends to human history. In the beginning, when God created everything, it was perfect and good. And in the end, God will restore his creation to its original perfection. God's justice will be accomplished, in the sense that everything will be set right again.

In the meantime, we experience God's justice and his kingdom reality in a more limited way. First and foremost, the kingdom of God brings restoration to our relationship with God. But within the kingdom of God we also experience other kinds of restoration: the sick are healed, broken relationships are restored, the oppressed are lifted up and vindicated, the poor and destitute are loved and cared for. All of these are forms of justice or restoration that point toward the day when everything will be made perfect again and God's justice is fully accomplished. They are like a shadow or a reflection of what is to come.

Justice as central to Jesus' calling And so justice was at the center of Jesus' mission. In Matthew 12:18-21, Matthew writes that Jesus fulfilled the words of Isaia