Sunday
Quiet Time - Gifts
Evening Assembly - Gifts, Acts 1
Flagpole - Needs
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Isn't it interesting that God gifts his people according to what is needed. The charge in Acts one, is that the followers of Jesus will be his witnesses, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. To accomplish such a mission they would need help, they would need something beyond sheer will power and luck, they would need Divine Assistance. Does that not happen in the promise in the continuing presence of Jesus through the Holy Spirit? Sure, Jesus had ascended into heaven, but He didn't leave his disciples to merely guess how to go about spreading his message, he empowers them for the task.
2000 years later, God operates in the same manner. He gifts according to His need. The same Spirit that indwelt Peter and the others, is the same Spirit who resides in our hearts seeking our submission to the kingdom reign of Christ in our lives. Christ still empowers His people for his mission. Tom Cruise may call it, Mission Impossible, but our God views it as Mission Possible.
1 comment:
" . . . according to His need . . ." - to speak of the needs of the Holy One is always a tricky process.
I like a current song that speaks of God's plans, and the fact that God does supply what those plans need - Caedmon's Call, "Table for Two"
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"And You know the plans that You have for me,
And You can't plan the end and not plan the means"
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These lines say something important. We know that God has plans, which means that he must have some sort of means (us). If we are his means, then we are the ones who have the needs: needs for resources, need for gifts, need for time and opportunity, but most importantly, the need for vision to see all of those things coming together.
We are the needy; God is the speedy. He runs to us when we admit our need. We may say that we wait on God, and so we ought. Sometimes I think we may have to wait on God's timing; I think that is what is happening in Acts 1, but perhaps it is something else.
I can't help but wonder sometimes if the reason that God does not appear to move sooner than he does is the fact that he is waiting for one (or more) of us to wake up to the fact that he has given us the resources, gifting, time and opportunity to move something forward. So a person who is "waiting on God" may not be waiting on God, but waiting on the instrument of God's plan (us).
May God help me seize the moment of opportunity so that the need of some child of God is not exacerbated by my slowness or lack of faith.
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