Monday Feb. 9th

In my work as a pastor I frequently meet with couples that are having marriage problems.  I recall meeting with one young man who was newly married and was particularly frustrated with the way things were going in the relationship with his wife.  He said to me, “I just don’t believe that marriage should be this hard.”  I was surprised by his comment and I asked him where he got the idea that marriage was supposed to be easy?  As we talked, it became increasingly apparent that the primary issue he had to deal with in his marriage was his own false expectations and wrong-headed ideas about how things were supposed to be.

When it comes to our relationship with God, we all have some false expectations and some wrong-headed ideas about what God is like and how He should do things.  We can’t help this really, and a big part of what it means to grow in our knowledge of God is letting go of our wrong thinking about God.

Colossians 1:9-10 - We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

This principle is present not just in our individual ideas about God, but it is especially true when it comes to how we view the church, and the people of God.  We might not say it out loud, but we all are prone to think that the church is for folks just like us.  There is even a principle espoused by the Church Growth movement, “the homogeneous unit” principle. It states that people are attracted to churches that have “their kind of people,” and advocates that we should be targeting a certain segment of the society. So you have churches that state that their target is to reach the Baby Boomers, or the Generation Xers. They aim their whole church service to make these kinds of people feel comfortable.  The New Testament and the book of Acts is clear that the church is God’s adopted family, made up of children from every conceivable background, to His glory!

The story of Peter & Cornelius in Acts 10 is all about how God radically changes the thinking of Peter.  The story in Acts 11 is all about how God uses the events of Acts 10 and the testimony of Peter to radically change the thinking of the whole church!  

Acts 11:15-18  - As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”  

The Gospel changes our wrong thinking, because our wrong thinking can get in the way of what God wants to do.  Did you catch what Peter said in vs. 17?  He said, “who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”  This means that before God opened his eyes to his own prejudice and blindness, he was actually standing in God’s way without even knowing it!  This is Peter!  He is an apostle, he walked with Jesus, if he can have blind spots, then we are truly blind indeed if we think we don’t have some too.  I shudder to think that this might be true about me, about us.  I don’t want my blindness or my hidden prejudices to ever stand in the way of what God might want to do through me!  

Jeff Frazier