by Jim Goddard

I moved to Australia in 2003 from the UK, leaving behind a ten-year corporate career sensing God’s call to use my gifts in a different way.

I had come to know Jesus in 1998, through The Alpha Course in London. I realised straight away that this meant a releasing of my gifs for His purposes. How this would look on a day-to-day basis was the question that started my adventure of living with God!

A year later while looking through the church newspaper and coming across an advert for child sponsorship, I decided to sponsor a child, Luis, in Bolivia through Compassion. In 2001 I decided to put together an adventure challenge to Iceland that engaged some 500 people and sponsors to follow our journey, while supporting the education of children living in poverty through Compassion.

It was in hindsight that I realised a blessing of at least equal measure to those children we had helped had rested upon all of us that had been engaged with the project. It reflected a deep desire for a sense of belonging in community,  to live for the betterment of society beyond our selfish wants, and to be used for a purpose in partnership with God.

It struck me that in order to truly understand God’s heart I needed to allow my heart to be broken for those things that His heart is broken for. Therefore, in 2002 I decided to travel to Bolivia to meet Luis while on a solo cycling trip through the Andes. Meeting Luis, his Mum and all the other children in the Compassion sponsorship project was a very special moment in my life.

It was as I left Luis that day, waving to him, his Mum and hundreds of other kids, with tears rolling my down my face that I came to understand that it is only through making oneself vulnerable and having direct relationship with the poor that we truly see God’s heart for His people. It started to dawn on me that our wealth is not for our own purposes, but for use in the stewardship of His love and grace to others.

I soon realised that it was in relationship with the poor, where I thought I had the most to offer, that I actually received the most myself. This led me to humbly acknowledge my own poverty, the reality that I was poor in so many ways myself. It took being in relationship with the poor to understand my own poverty – that being a poverty of the heart, a lacking of true dependable relationships upon others and God.

On my return from South America the issue of poverty and justice in the Bible and how Jesus lived his life confronted me head on. ‘Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy’ - Proverbs 31:8-9. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ - Mathew 22:39. It became hard to ignore such bold commands!

Through a time of deep discernment I felt that God wanted me to somehow broker partnerships between the developed and developing world, to engage people in community for a purpose beyond themselves, to bring people into relationship with the poor for mutual benefit. Partnerships that allow people to use their gifts and passions in community for the purposes of loving their neighbour.

Hence Action Against Poverty (now Manly-Manado) as an idea was born and what a wonderful journey of continued personal transformation I feel I am on.

We have so much to learn from those who are living in difficult circumstances, so much to learn that we have forgotten about in our haste to develop and grab wealth. It was the greatest privilege of all to meet Luis and his single Mum in their simple one room cement abode in the foothills of the Andes and have such generosity extended towards me as it has been to meet many others living in poverty in recent years in Indonesia and Africa. As I reflect upon how much I see my life has been transformed since through meeting them, I realise that we have all been mutually transformed together through relationship, transformed out of our own particular poverty to some measure.