4-9-2016

 Good Morning All!!

Acts 11:23; “When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose”

    There was a persecution of the new Christians in Jerusalem.  Many of these new believers left Jerusalem and went throughout the region.  Some of them ended up in the city of Antioch.  Now all these people were Jews and when they went to Antioch, they met with other Jews and taught about Jesus.  Soon some of the Greeks were listening and began to believe in Jesus as the Christ.  The church in Jerusalem heard about this so they sent Barnabas to go check things out.

    What Barnabas saw excited him for he saw the grace of God.  He spoke to the people and exhorted them or encouraged them to remain faithful.  He didn’t tell them to build a bigger church or give more money or start some new mission project.  He didn’t tell them to launch a membership drive or have more potluck suppers.  Barnabas encouraged them to remain faithful.  In many ways, this is the same encouragement for us.  We are to remain faithful.

    It can be difficult.  We can have friends or even family members who question or try to lead us away.  Maybe not on purpose or even by design but the devil uses them to lead us astray.  The devil’s goal is to lead us to be unfaithful to fall away or to walk away from Jesus and his teaching.  This can take many forms.  It might be where you question whether God can or will hear you.  It might be to question the events around you and question the goodness of God.  When we look around we might be tempted to lose heart and to lose faith.  We want to figure it out; we want to explain why things are the way they are.  This is not what God calls us to do.  God calls us to be faithful.

    Many people think that they want to understand everything that happens.  It might be a very great blessing that we don’t.  We don’t know all the pain and all the suffering that God knows because of the sin in the world; it could very easily be more than we could ever stand.  We could very easily be crushed under the weight of that knowledge.  In many ways, God is shielding us and protecting us from the pain by not revealing all of this to us.  God invites us to remain faithful, to keep our focus on his gracious will for us revealed to us in Jesus.  God invites us to remain faithful and thus be steadfast in our purpose; this purpose being to be His witnesses and ambassadors here in this world.

    We are not called to defend God or to explain God.  We are called to be faithful.  We are called to remember what Jesus did and does for us.  We are called to hold onto God’s truth and to live as his people.  We are to live as his people of loving; bringing healing and hope to this broken creation.  We are to touch the untouchable, love the unlovable, comfort the hurting, feed the hungry and give solace to the dying.  That is what faithful people do; they show the love of God to all in need.

Father, you call us to be faithful.  Send your Spirit to empower us to always focus on you and your grace in our lives.  Enrich us with your holy presence that we may be your people.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen Savior we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret