Welcome to the STC Sheffield Daily Podcast. My name is Helen, and I’m going to be continuing our reflections on the book of Galatians, that my husband Alan started last week.

Our passage today is Galatians Chapter 2 vs6-10, and I’d like us to focus on verses 7 and 9:

“They recognised that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised……They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.”

REFLECTION:

In the autumn our eldest son will be heading to university to study Forensic Psychology. He then wants to complete a Masters, and ultimately his aim is to work in prisons. Prior to him applying, we went to various universities and met several lecturers. My favourite was the one who looked straight across the table at Jacob and said, “You do know that what you want to do means you are mainly going to be working with sex offenders and paedophiles.”

I’m not going to lie; my secret hope was that he would say, “No, I hadn’t realised. I’m not sure I want to do it after all.”

Instead he replied, “Yes, I know that.”

On the train back home, I asked him a few questions……just to double check. He said that he believed that every person deserved the opportunity to change their life, and it was a place where he felt called to live out his Christian faith by showing forgiveness and love to all people.

I didn’t have any reply.

And now my job is to recognise that, despite my motherly reservations, this is where God is leading him, and I need to release him to pursue this call upon his life.

Recognise and release.

In Jerusalem, the pillars of the Christian church – the senior leaders – James, Peter and John were faced with a similar situation – were they going to recognise the call upon Paul’s life and release him to follow it?

Paul felt called by God to preach the Gospel to Gentiles. However, to law abiding Jews, Gentiles were to be avoided at all costs. Jews could not do business with Gentiles, could not go on a journey with a Gentile, could not sit down and eat a meal with Gentiles. Spending time with Gentiles was taboo. They were unclean.

A bit like spending time with sex offenders and paedophiles.

There was much questioning and opposition to what Paul was wanting to do; and at the time he was writing to the Galatians, the decision to allow him to do this really could have gone either way.

However, the leaders of the church recognised that reaching the Gentiles with the Good News of Jesus was a specific calling and task that had been given to Paul, and so they released him.

They didn’t try to add, change or alter what he was doing or preaching.

His presentation, his personality, his emphasis and his style was different, and not necessarily the way they would have done it, but they recognised that he was being called to speak to a different audience.

The leaders of the church knew he was preaching the same Gospel – and so they gave him the right hand of fellowship and released him to do it.

So, how can we apply this in our own contexts and situations?

Firstly, we need to make sure that as spouses, as parents, as employers, as team leaders – in whatever role or position we find ourselves – we do everything that we can to release people into their own specific tasks or calling; because this is the only way we will see someone’s full God given potential come into being.

The other reason this should be a key priority is because it is also the way we get to see and experience the fullness of what God has planned for our marriages, our family, our workplace and our team, as well as those whom we connect with outside of or beyond this.

We may have reservations as we release other people – I shared my own experience of this just a moment ago – but these should not become stumbling blocks that we plac...