Luke 11:41Plain English VersionThe right way is like this. You have to think in your heads about poor people, and you have to feel sorry for them, and you have to give them the things they need. Then God will say that you are clean, on the inside as well as on the outside. See the chapter |
But later, at his house, Zakias stood up and said to Jesus, “Listen, sir, this is what I am going to do now. I am going to split up all the things I own into 2 heaps, and I will give one heap away to poor people. And as well as that, I’m going to give money back to those people that I cheated. I am going to give them back 4 times as much as I took from them.”
The Christians in Antioch heard Agabus tell that message, and they remembered the Christians in Judea. They knew that the Judea Christians were poor, so they would have a very hard time if there is not much food. The Antioch Christians wanted to help them, so they all put money into a bag. Each of them gave as much money as they could. Then they gave it to Barnabas and Saul, and those 2 men, took it to the Christian leaders in Jerusalem, in Judea country.
You know, if people just want to follow God’s way, they don’t have to worry about people’s rules. They are clean inside, so everything is all right for them. But nothing is all right for people that don’t want to follow God’s way. They can only think in a bad way. They don’t know what is right and what is wrong.
And God also wants you to look after people that need help. He wants you to look after people that haven’t got any money to buy food, like kids that haven’t got a mother or a father, or women whose husbands have died. If you do that sort of thing, God will be happy with you. But God will not be happy with you if you just look after yourself, like the people that belong to this world do.