IDC - the witnesses

This week at IDC (our Bible Study group we’ve started with some friends), we began studying the Book of Acts. Officially the book is called “The Acts of the Apostles,” but as I told the group, I’ve heard it said so many times that it could have been called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” This is because the book outlines how the Holy Spirit used this motley crew of believers in Jesus to turn the whole world “upside down” in a very few short years. Starting with 120 believers in an upper room, waiting for a promise to come, in what form they didn’t know, to apostles and prophets, elders and teachers over the entire known world. Amazing feat, for such humble beginnings, especially considering the persecution that they endured to spread their message. I believe that is another “proof,” if you need one, of the transforming power of grace in their lives, because they allowed nothing to slow them down. When they got beat up, they prayed and went back at it. It had to be the sustaining power of grace through the Holy Spirit’s activity in their lives that motivated them.

It reminds me that we cannot try to do, even good things for God, without his help. Those zealous ones of us that try so hard to move out and “win the world” on our own, quickly find it to be a lonely place in life without the energizing power of God.

Jesus reminded the disciples as he was leaving them, that they were to wait for the Holy Spirit who would make them to become witnesses of him to the world, starting in Jerusalem, then Judea, Samaria, and then to the “outermost parts of the earth.” It wasn’t that the Holy Spirit would make them “witness” to others, but that he would give them the ability to “become the witness” of what God had done in them through Christ. We are to become a witness, an expert witness on the stand of life, testifying to what God has done in and through us because of Jesus. It’s not in ourselves that we can do these things, but only through him who loves us.

As we talked about this I asked the group, so where is your Jerusalem? Where is your Judea and Samaria? What does it mean to go to the uttermost parts of the earth? When I think of Jerusalem, I think of my home, my family, they are my primary responsibility and my first ministry. I think of Judea as my work, my ministry, my influence that increases around outside of my family. Then Samaria being those place that might be in my community that God is calling me to be an influencer, to “be a witness” of his grace, and then the uttermost parts are wherever the wind will blow us…that place that will call in the night like Paul’s Macedonian call, which says “come and bring the message to us.”

What are your Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? Is it geography or relational? Is it a place in time or space? Where is your expert testimony being called to court?