We read from the Acts of the Apostles from chapter 3:1 to 4:32 last night at “LightHouse” (the LiFE Group I’m part of right now). And I was intrigued by the interesting and often illuminating sharing from the 8 of us. Ken Beng (who’s a newly baptised Christian) pleasantly surprised me with his insight. Partly, because he comes from a totally unchurched background and in some ways less contaminated by Christianese or any form of pseudo-spirituality often lurking in churches. 🙂 Lord have mercy on us!
He highlighted for him, he wanted to be like “Peter” who did what Jesus did (i.e. brought healing to the lame man) but gave the credit and honor to Jesus. That’s kind of like a little summary of “Acts”. Now that Jesus has returned to the Father, we (the people of God – the church) continue to do and teach as Jesus did. We share not our own message, but the message (good news) of Jesus and the Spirit empowers us to CONTINUE his ministry here on earth. In that way, we are WITNESSES to our world for Christ. I was thorought refreshed by his reading as well as other inputs.
More exciting for me is the process, 8 humans who are Christ-followers were engaged in last night for about an hour plus. As we read the Scriptures through human eyes but submitting ourselves under the gentle guidance of the Spirit of truth, we unearth treasures at least from two ends. One obviously from God’s Story as found in this case Acts. The other, indirectly is actually our Stories in the sace of our daily lives, inner thoughts and feelings plus experiences (which includes our history). And then, in our vulnerability and openness we share our stories as a gift to each other. Our Stories merge, morphes, and moves into a new “combined” version in this process of prayerful sharing while fitting into God’s bigger Story (as revealed in the Scriptures). Now, as people who are “morphing” (with the help of the Spirit), we become more willing to be “moved” (not in just an emotional sense but in a directional sense – life direction), we’re moved beyond our individual stories to God’s grand purpose for all creation. As we continue this process individually daily, and as a church weekly (through smaller group readings like the LiFe Group) and (bigger groups like the worship gathering). I’m growing in confidence that we will be shaped more into Christ-likeness, and Kingdom Agenda.