Jesus came not to destroy the idea of Jubilee, but to extend the spirit of it to people in every nation.

Mal Fletcher

In July, more than 200,000 people joined together in London's Hyde Park for the Live 8 event.

Collectively, they were saying something like this: 'We believe that poverty, especially in Africa, can be ended, and we want to be a part of achieving that.'

He may not always get the credit for it, but it was God who invented the idea of
world-scale aid programs -- and he called the concept 'Jubilee'.

If you've been listening to the discussion surrounding the Make Poverty History campaign and the recent Live 8 events, you will have heard much that's reminiscent of Jubilee.

In Old Testament times, God ordained that every fiftieth year should be a year of what Jesus called 'God's favour'. All debts were to be cancelled; people who had lost land through debt could have it returned to them; and people living in debtors' prisons were to be set free.

This command wasn't always kept in Israel, yet Jubilee still stands as a reminder of how God acts and thinks.

I've visited Africa - mainly the south - on a number of occasions and I've seen a little of the poverty which has been such a feature of life for millions of people. Perhaps Jesus had those people in mind when, at the beginning of his mission, he announced his intention to proclaim Jubilee.

Jesus came not to destroy the idea of Jubilee, but to extend the spirit of it to people in every nation.

Jubilee was always about more than cancelling debts. It was about correcting the unfair advantage taken in so many debt situations: the use of power and privilege, for example, to put people in debt. Jubilee meant giving the 'little guy' a chance to climb out from under his mountain of debt.

You may not have the power to grant the most deserving African nations a year of jubilee, but you can make a difference to issues of need by adopting a Jubilee lifestyle.

The Jubilee lifestyle is characterised by a series of choices. The first is the decision to live by faith. This means aggressively believing the promises God has made toward you so that, as you apply your skills you not only comfortably meet your own needs but have enough to be a generous blessing to others.

Exercising faith won't always give you everything you ever wanted, but it will provide all you will ever need - and more to give away.

The second Jubilee lifestyle choice involves living simply. God does not call every Christian to take a vow of personal poverty. The problem of poverty is not solved by more poverty. But the Lord does require that we move away from a life of luxury and ease.

Material comfort isn't wrong in itself, but excessive comfort encourages self-sufficient pride, dulls our spiritual senses - our poverty of spirit - and breeds materialistic thinking, to the point where things start to 'own' us.