After his conversion Saul arrives back in Jerusalem, but not to the welcome he had hoped for.

The disciples there are fearful of Saul and his intentions.

Saul needs someone to be his advocate and stand with him. Barnabas is just the man for the job…

In Luke’s tale of two visions, God calls two people to change their life plans in order for the gospel of Jesus to spread further.

Most of us live with two nagging questions that keep coming back to haunt us.

‘How do we know what we should be doing?’
‘I don’t think I fit in here, am I good enough?’

Acts 8 gives us a glimpse of the answers to both of these questions.

The action has all been in Jerusalem up to now but with the persecution, the gospel travels to the places where people had thought things could never change.

Samaria was an ongoing problem to the Jews – history and culture meant that they could never imagine that things could ever be any different.

Yet change happens because of the bravery of people and the power of the Spirit.

How might this lead us to see our own situations and our city differently?

The religious folks resisted what was happening, and charge Stephen with going against the temple and the law. Stephen re-tells their own history to them, showing that God has always operated outside of the temple, Jerusalem and Israel. God was with his people, and at work, in all the difficult places.

God is in the business of doing new things. We are on a journey with him. In difficult times, times of change, times of uncertainty, we follow Jesus.

Sometimes in order to pick up new things, we have to lay other things down.

Growth led to tensions. And it was between people who came from different cultures and spoke different languages. One group felt they were being discriminated again. The issue was a heart one but also a systemic problem. The church needed to change because of the growth it had seen. Ministry had to be widened. The church needed to use people who were equally Spirit-filled as well as wise.

At times of stress, or change, old animosities can emerge. They need to be addressed. If they aren’t what makes us think we will be ready for what God has in store for us in the future. If the early church hadn’t solved this problem, they would never have been able to deal with the questions that would be raised when Gentiles accepted the gospel.

But because they could, the church continued to grow…. And that would lead to further challenges … and so it goes!

News of the resurrection of Jesus was deeply disturbing to the authorities, who were desperately trying to keep order. The apostles directly threatened the status quo – they stood in the temple offering a radically different understanding of all that God was doing.

They were arrested and put in jail, but the angel broke down the door – and gave them specific orders to go back and to keep on speaking.

In contexts where it’s easy for faith to be kept private, we are called to this same bravery…

In a week where we have seen protests about blatant acts of injustice, and against a backdrop where coronavirus has affected BAME people more than others, it’s easy to feel disempowered to know how to change anything.

But Acts 4:32-5:11 shows the result of being filled with the Spirit and how the resurrection of Jesus created the foundations of a new society. That society challenged the existing culture, but also revealed the best and the worst of the community – Barnabas was the best, Ananias and Sapphira trying to act in ways that would hide their deception.

The passage challenges us to be open to the Spirit and then to be open to the challenge of generosity towards one another. It challenges the individualism that most of us have been schooled in only too effectively!

The healing of the crippled man really disturbed the establishment. They understood, rightly so, that if this happened because of the resurrection of Jesus then everything they had worked so hard to get – for themselves and for their nation would be at risk.

The only thing they could do at this stage was to try and intimidate the apostles. But it didn’t work. The disciples knew that the establishment couldn’t heal a man; nor could they create a new society. Only Jesus could.

The challenge for us is to stop faith becoming private – but for us to know how the resurrection of Jesus helps us: with New Ways of seeing; New Lives being created; New Hopes being expressed; and New Ways of living. Perhaps as we deal with the present uncertainty and national frustration this has never been more necessary.

This is part of the outworking of the Spirit at work through our lives.

A man who has been begging for 40 years – a lifetime of not being able to walk. But then something happens to that man, because two men slowed down enough to notice him…

Day 2: #Praise'Thy Kingdom Come – we praise your Holy Name, your sacrifice and rising sets us free…'We are pleased to share with you this year's anthem 'Thy Kingdom Come', sung by Pete James. with freshly re-written lyrics set to the music of 'Tell Out My Soul.'