‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’
When we get to heaven I think we will say that about quite a few people.
We can be so sure about who God would want on his side that we can feel indignant when he shows us that we were wrong!
Can anything change?
Do things always have to be the same?
The early Christians in Acts were certain of a few things: that Jesus had risen from the dead and that meant that things could change – even the worst of things.
The same truths define us: we live in a world where awful things happen. But the resurrected Jesus is still at work.…
After his conversion Saul arrives back in Jerusalem, but not to the welcome he had hoped for.
The disciples there are fearful of Saul and his intentions. Saul needs someone to be his advocate and stand with him.
Barnabas is just the man for the job…
In Luke’s tale of two visions, God calls two people to change their life plans in order for the gospel of Jesus to spread further.
Most of us live with two nagging questions that keep coming back.
‘How do we know what we should be doing?’
‘I don’t think I fit in here, am I good enough?’
Acts 8 gives us a glimpse of the answers to both of these questions.
The action has all been in Jerusalem up to now but with the persecution, the gospel travels to the places where people had thought things could never change.
Samaria was an ongoing problem to the Jews – history and culture meant that they could never imagine that things could ever be any different.
Yet change happens because of the bravery of people and the power of the Spirit.
How might this lead us to see our own situations and our city differently?
The religious folks resisted what was happening, and charge Stephen with going against the temple and the law. Stephen re-tells their own history to them, showing that God has always operated outside of the temple, Jerusalem and Israel. God was with his people, and at work, in all the difficult places.
God is in the business of doing new things. We are on a journey with him. In difficult times, times of change, times of uncertainty, we follow Jesus.
Sometimes in order to pick up new things, we have to lay other things down.
At times of stress, or change, old animosities can emerge. They need to be addressed. If they aren’t what makes us think we will be ready for what God has in store for us in the future. If the early church hadn’t solved this problem, they would never have been able to deal with the questions that would be raised when Gentiles accepted the gospel.
News of the resurrection of Jesus was deeply disturbing to the authorities, who were desperately trying to keep order. The apostles directly threatened the status quo – they stood in the temple offering a radically different understanding of all that God was doing.
They were arrested and put in jail, but the angel broke down the door – and gave them specific orders to go back and to keep on speaking.
In contexts where it’s easy for faith to be kept private, we are called to this same bravery…
In a week where we have seen protests about blatant acts of injustice, and against a backdrop where coronavirus has affected BAME people more than others, it’s easy to feel disempowered to know how to change anything.
But Acts 4:32-5:11 shows the result of being filled with the Spirit and how the resurrection of Jesus created the foundations of a new society. That society challenged the existing culture, but also revealed the best and the worst of the community…
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info@salfordelimchurch.org
07771 558 058
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Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance
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