What Now? 2

Acts 4:33

The song “Switchin’ to Glide” has the lyrics, “Nothing matters but the weekend, from a Tuesday point of view.” The message seems to be that we can anticipate easier times to come once all the hubbub and worry of life is over. We can often take that approach. We go through all the worry and work of things that require our attention and we look forward to the times when we can take things easy.

Unfortunately that same attitude can pervade our faith life. As spring grows warm and sunny our attention is focused on all the things that are now before us and we forget about all the excitement of our religious past.

The faithful followers of Jesus had sat fairly idle for weeks until the Holy Spirit came upon them on the day of Pentecost. Then they were filled with the power of God and compelled to move forward in their faith. What was going on with the disciples? What were they doing? What did they have?

The time for being idle was over. The early church was at last moving forward. This single verse sums up the work being done. The disciples were preaching to the community, sharing the good news of Christ and his resurrection, and therefore the message of salvation.

They did not do their work meekly. They had power from God. They were bold. They were effective.

This group of believers who had fallen into inactivity was now very busy. The result was that much grace was upon them. We can assume that their lives were blessed by this grace, and we can also assume that they had much grace to bestow on others.

We must be like the early believers. They had been with Jesus in his ministry. They had witnessed the crucifixion. They had experienced the resurrection. And at first that seemed to offer them no motivation. But eventually they came alive in their faith and went to work.

We must not allow ourselves to fall into apathy or laziness. Our faith should be alive in us as well and we should be about the work of sharing the news of Christ.

DAILY CHALLENGE: What does it take to breathe life into your faith?