How’s your ACTivate adventure going? Todays post from ACTS chapter 10 is by Daniel Smart, pastor in our Hammersmith congregation:

“Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right.” – Acts 10:34-35

Who do you expect to be saved?

When Jesus gave his followers his great commission he was very clear that the gospel must be preached in every nation. However, I sometimes wonder if his disciples really grasped what he meant when he said this. After all, they had grown up with an understanding that they – the Jews – were God’s chosen people, and that Jesus was their long-awaited Jewish Messiah.

By this point in Acts the church is made up of several thousand people who had come from many different nations – but they are all still Jewish. In this chapter God uses a series of divine revelations to set up a meeting, a preaching, and an outpouring of the spirit so that many gentiles will be saved. Peter didn’t seem to expect non-Jews to be saved and receive the gift of the Spirit, but God had bigger plans.

God doesn’t show favouritism.

It can be so easy to think that spiritual living is just for a particular type of person. Maybe it’s just for nice, respectable people; the academically gifted or the socially ‘normal’. Or it is just for the deeply emotional or those who are just plain weird.

As you look around your unbelieving world, who do you expect to be saved and filled with the Spirit? Is it just people like you, or are you open to God using you to reach people who are different from you?

Or, as you look around the church, maybe you feel like the outsider? Maybe you aren’t quite like everybody else and you think maybe God’s Spirit isn’t really for people like you?

This Acts story shows us message of the gospel, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is available for all. It doesn’t matter what skin-colour, upbringing, academic ability, or personality type. God does not show favouritism: Spiritual living is for all!

 So what does this mean for you today?

1. Whether you’re a stereotypical spirit-filled Christian or not, the message of the gospel and the promise of the Holy Spirit is for you
2. If you will let him, God will use you to be a witness to some people who you would not expect to be hungry for Jesus.

I pray today that you will know just how acceptable you are to God through Jesus, and that you will allow him to use you make disciples and make a difference in every nation.