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Our congregational bible study began a new focus this Sunday on Mission. We were reminded that “Mission” in the spiritual perspective is certainly something that we as His beloved people are deeply integrated with, but originally and ultimately, Mission is God’s.
It began at the beginning of everything, when God sent His Word, Jesus Christ, to create when “…God said, let there be…” (Genesis 1:3). His spoken Word, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, worked through the fathers of our faith, like Moses as he obediently led God’s people through the first Passover in Egypt through the Dead Sea and into the desert to the base of Mt Sinai where he received God’s written Word- the Ten Commandments. The same Holy Spirit present in the lightning, thunder, and fire on Mt. Sinai rested on each of the 11 disciples as tongues of fire as they celebrated Pentecost not long after seeing the resurrected Christ. They began speaking in foreign languages, and other visitors celebrating Pentecost in Jerusalem heard them. They were from every nation, each hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to them through the disciples in their own tongue.
And this is what especially struck me this morning: Some of those visitors to Jerusalem on that day were from Rome, and when they returned home afterwards, they told everyone about what they had seen and heard. The fire of the Holy Spirit that alit the disciples spread throughout the Roman province, through the spoken word of these visitors. That Word planted the Roman church to which Paul wrote his epistle 20 years later, having not been there yet himself.
Maybe you are like me and think sometimes that others have the greater calling of planting churches or participating in the saving of thousands for Christ - certainly not me.
Well, perhaps we just need to remember those men and women visiting in Jerusalem at Pentecost. They simply just witnessed to others what they had seen and heard, what they knew about God working within their lives or the world around them.
Where might the Holy Spirit use your words of witness to further His Mission?