LESSONS FROM ACTS 15:36-41 (PART 2)
One of the great tragedies of life that has a way of shaping who we eventually become is the words that people say about us as we grow up. As humans, we tend to internalize most of, if not everything that is said about us. And those mostly unrefined, biased thoughts become a stencil of our lives.
Praise be to God for the resurrection power that we find in Jesus the Messiah; “what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, they are created anew. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19).
In Jesus the Messiah, God established our value, and who it is we belong to; Therefore, If God loved us so, we ought to love one another. Loving other people is a significant part of what it means to be a Kingdom citizen.
In part 1 of this talk from Acts 15:36-41, we looked at the dangers of standardizing Christian identity and practice. In this section, we will draw from the same story, a lesson on Spiritual Maturity.
A LESSON ON SPIRITUAL MATURITY
One weapon of mass destruction that is often used is that of Spiritual maturity. Many times people’s choices are mercilessly criticized under the guise of helping them to mature as Christians. Those in leadership always run the risk of having their reputation torn to pieces if they make a mistake or have bad results from a good idea they championed.
Often, we look at the story of Paul and Barnabas from a modern-day political lens, one that almost always tries to blame someone. We often wonder which of the two great church leaders should be an object lesson in the ranks of Dathan, Abiram, and Korah (Numbers 16).
In our hunt for spiritual misfits, we ought to remember that leaders are also growing Christians. Instead of asking the question, who was at fault? We should be asking the question, How did they grow from this event? We know, for example, that Paul would later ponder all this and act on reconciliation with John Mark and Barnabas.
Later on in his letter to Timothy, Paul requested for John Mark because of his “usefulness in ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11). In his letter to the church in Corinth, written while he was in Ephesus. One can’t help but start to see Paul in the light of 1 Corinthians 13 and not Acts 15:38. Paul was maturing and growing as a Christian.
The frontlines of ministry are not a museum of professionally curated Spiritual giants but broken and wounded people in the tranches with their Loving Savior.
Let us be wary of using our words as a tool for falsely magnifying estrangement from God, His Kingdom, and other Kingdom citizens.
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