Sunday, January 28, 2007

Lena's Discipleship Journalin to Acts 25 (Short & Sweet!)

I was thinking of how many of us come into God’s kingdom as people who have needs or pains and are looking for answers and blessings and relief. We find the love of God so amazingly powerful and experience it firsthand, then we begin to grow up into that love and it becomes more defined to us than it was when we were in our infant stage of Christianity.
In infancy it is all about our own needs being met, about feeding and strengthening us. As we grow we grow up into responsibility, if we take on the responsibility, it soon becomes all about Him. Things do not become easier, but rather harder to walk out. The challenges are beyond us, but not beyond Him. We are in a walk of faith and trust and deep reliance on Him, in order to better serve and see His Divine will and plan played out with us playing a willing part in it.
Paul was definitely getting deeper. Have you ever heard scripture promises that say , “You will stand before kings”? Well Paul was fulfilling that prophecy, but it was not necessarily a glorious feat. Whenever you hear prophecies over you about being before great men, be careful to not think you’ll stand there as a regal subject. Paul stood there persecuted. It was his opportunity though. Notice before each leader who he was tried by, Paul repeated the message of the gospel of Christ!
He was told he’d be going into all the world and preach, we are also told that. Sometimes we glorify the thought, like we are gonna see so many saved, but Paul was there preaching and when we spoke the words of life and salvation he was not in a prayer meeting laying hands on people and seeing altar responses. He was preaching salvation alright and to leaders and kings, but he wasn’t seeing great responses to the message. The responses showed their way in the form of further persecutions and then going before trials of more leaders. God would be the one who would reap the seeds Paul was so faithful to plant. Our responsibility before God is to plant and water, no matter what the situation.
Wow, huh?