Acts 11:1-18
Be still: Lord, reveal your power to us in today’s passage and give us the faith to really believe it. Amen.
Read: Acts 11:1-18
When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, 'So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.' (v18)
Encounter: When someone starts following Jesus, they’re often excited and lean in; they want to learn his ways of walking and talking – the kingdom’s customs. This learning is key: it helps us identify where Jesus is in our lives and the things that aren’t him at all. But once you’ve followed Jesus for a while, it’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of over familiarity – to think you fully know him because you know the Bible stories, you’ve said many prayers and been to many church services. You are a christian and a christian is you.
The great humbler of my christian walk is remembering that God is infinitely big, the kind of big that my brain can’t fully comprehend. We’ll spend our lives trying to get to know him better, meeting the concepts we thought we had undoubtedly grasped, to deconstruct them and reconstruct them as our faith deepens.
Alpha is known as a famous starting point for those exploring Christianity. But I think the christian walk done well – curiously and openly – is a life-long alpha course. You read the Word, watch your life and others’, have ideas, discuss those, learn some things and unlearn some unhelpful things by the Spirit. The cycle repeats, and you move closer to this ginormous God, who is too big to ever be fully known.
In v2-3 Peter’s fellow jewish believers criticised Peter for intimately mixing with gentiles; they knew their tradition well enough to know that that was a 'no no'. But they also had an openness to hearing Peter explain why he’d done the unexpected and through that they were able to grasp a bit more of God.
Apply: What areas of your faith do you feel most familiar with? Ask God if there’s anything new in those he wants to reveal to you, through the Bible.
Devote: Lord, thank you that there is always more of you to discover, which keeps this journey of life with you inspiring. Help us to be and remain explorers of the faith.