Story "Academic consultancy…..or Starcraft"
Some of you, before you even got to Mac, have had everything already settled and hammered out for your life, whether it be your schooling, your career, your sort of church, your faith practices, how you view your relationship with God, etc. You have grown up with a ton more teaching and voices keeping you safe and on the straight and narrow so to speak, than I ever did.
Yet I wonder if you think that what you've been told is all there is? I wonder if you're content to sit in your childhood sandbox, always learning and knowing that there's more to God, but never venturing out to find Him?
I wonder if you are satisfied with that. I wonder if you have had enough of God in your life already.
Jesus in Acts 1 told his disciples, indirectly telling us, that we are to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Story "I married a lawyer ... material and expert witnesses"
Expert witnesses are chosen because of their academic study and achievements. Their “expert-ness” is relied upon to give a third-person, arms length interpretation of the evidence leftover by an incident.
Material witnesses, on the other hand, were people who were actually there at the incident. They saw. They heard. They felt. They often were changed by that experience.
So which type of witness was Jesus calling us to be?
In Acts 4, Peter and the disciples were brought before the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, because their were spreading the word about Jesus. The scripture records that Sanhedrin specifically noticed that they were uneducated, common men and that they have been with Jesus. They stood out because they were not experts and that they had spent material time with Jesus.
So when I think back to Jesus telling us to be his witnesses, I believe he meant material witnesses, not theological experts. We are to testify of what He's done in our lives and the lives around us, not just postulate and theorize about things we have not seen.
Because the kingdom of God is real, the person of Jesus is real today, the Holy Spirit works today. They are not just words on a page; they are not just data.
There is more to you, there is certainly more to God, than what you have learnt, than what you have been told and how you have been shaped. Now is the time, when you are surrounded by possibilities and bus passes, to get out of your familiar spaces and familiar ways and seek Him out anew: to see the things that you think you know, and walk with God in completely new ways.
Try out different church services, fellowships even, start new spiritual disciplines, questions the easy answers, doubt things you never dared to before, prayerfully examine the expectations and limitations that have been ingrained in you.
Explore and witness and testify to more of God, He really is immeasurably more than you can imagine.
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