So today’s blog post was supposed to be about how Acts 2 keeps popping up and what it taught me about door-to-door evangelism. But that will have to wait for next week.
Yesterday, our squad leaders led a mini-workshop focusing on different spiritual practices and ideas. After I (finally) got my blog added, we had two more evening sessions. In them, I kept finding links to what I had just written about. With the first one, I thought, ‘Well, that’s cool,’ and would have left it at that. But then they kept coming. I wanted to share because A) our squad leaders are awesome and B) I love it when God speaks through other people about the same thing I’ve been ruminating on.
The first aha moment came while we were discussing spiritual gifts. In talking about the intention behind using gifts, we read Philippians 1:15-18. The passage ends with this verse:
What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.
I haven’t had any encounters with false motives in this regard, but I was struck by how similar this verse was to the conclusion of my blog. What is the takeaway from our ministry? If Christ is proclaimed, then we rejoice. And I truly believe that Christ is being proclaimed in the Bibles we handed out.
Then after a fantastic worship session, we ended the night talking about community. We were reminded that there has to be GRACE when a body of believers come together, because we don’t always get along perfectly. Grace that can cover the awkwardness of presenting Bibles to bowing people, grace that can cover miscommunication between teammates, grace that can cover any of our human mistakes.
If we never messed up, then we wouldn’t be able to go deep with one another. And if things never got uncomfortable, we wouldn’t learn. The example given was about exercising: when it starts to hurt, that’s when it starts to really count. If we choose to give up, if we decide to get comfortable, we haven’t gotten any real work done.
But when we choose to press in, amazing things start to happen.
If our team had stopped and said, “This is too awkward,” then those 15 Bibles would never had made it where God intended them to go. If we had been aiming for comfort, we never would have signed up for the World Race! And so we keep showing up and learning and trying, because even when we don’t see it, God is working wonders through our actions.
