Over the next couple of weeks my I am going to be filming a Promotional Video for James 127. Here is what I'm going to say.....seems to be the easiest way to convey what's been put on my heart. It's a little long, but please read it all. So..........James 127
I used to think that the whole Christian life was to be lived through sermons & messages given behind a podium. Through going to church 4 days a week. Reading my bible for over an hour a day. Listening & singing to the lastest worship CD. I used to think that was it. The life I was to live for God. But I was shown there was more beyond that.
There's this book in the Old Testament of the Bible, Jeremiah. In it you find these messages that God told the Prophet Jeremiah to tell the people of Israel. And in these messages you read time & time again how God called the people of Israel, His people, to be a people of justice & righteousness. To help the needy, to care for the oppressed, the orphaned & the widowed. But they don't listen.
At the start of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the Synagoge in Nazareth, His hometown, & begins to read from the scroll of Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, & recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...."
Now it's recorded in the Gospels that Jesus only reads these two verses, but Isaiah continues....."to grant those who mourn in Zion - to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."
If you look throughout the scriptures, you seee that God is a God who hears the cry of the oppressed. The poor. The orphaned. The widowed. Imagine a group of people who did the same thing. Who took hold of what isaiah wrote. Who also did what Jesus came to do.
James 127 Studios gets its name from the Bible. James 1:27 says, "Religion that is pure & undefiled before God, the Father is this: to visit orphanes & widows in their affliction." The vision for James 127 was given to me while I attened a missions outreach to Cairo, Egypt in June of 2006.
A group of three of us, went out with a local church memeber to visit the poorest of Cairo, one morning. During those 3 hours I came to understand what Jesus meant when He said, "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." That morning we visited the widowed, the orphaned, the paralyzed, the blind, Christian & Muslim. And it was amongst these people that I met Jesus in a way I'd never experienced before. It was there god showed me that, life for me, would be lived among people. Spending time with & loving people. Those were the beginning moments of James 127 Studios.
So again, imagine a group of people who didn't just go visit the poor, but instead lived with them. That's what we want to do. For 1 to 3 months at a time we will go to people groups all over the world & live with them. Share, laugh, cry with & love these people in their environment, & in the communities; with the hope of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with them through life together.
And then.........we'll capture that life on film.
You see James 127 doesn't just want to reach out to the poor & the widowed.
We want to reach everyone .
I was reading this book no to long ago by this Pastor from Grand Rapids, Michigan. And in this section of the book he talks about this verse from the Bible in the book of Isaiah. And how Isaiah saw these Angels & how they were saying, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole Earth is filled with His glory." And this Pastor goes on to talk about the word "glory". the hebrew word for glory is "kavod", which means wieght & significance. So what this verse is saying is that, this world, the one we live in now, today, is FULL of God's wieght & significance. His splender. His glory.
He even mentions that according to ancient Jewish worldview, God is present everywhere. It's His world. He made it. He owns it & is right here right now. We just don't realized it alll the time. Jacob even says after waking up from a dream in Genesis, "Surely the Lord is in this place, & I was not aware of it."
So from community & family celebration times to mourning the lose of a loved one, we want to capture every aspect of life on film, cause God's glory is in it all. It's what holds each moment together. And once we've returned home, we will try to help everyone around the world experience life lived with these people, & to share God's glory with the world, through photo journals & DVD's. And all the money gain from those journals & DVD's will go right back to the people group they're about.
We don't just want to send money to people around the world. We want to help change thier lives by being the example of Jesus Christ we're called to be to them. and then continue to love & support them after we're gone.
Well that's it. For then on in the video it'll tell you how you can go on to support James 127. Thanks for reading.
God Bless
Geoff P. Matero
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