Today's passage is Acts 5:27-41.
The apostles are called before the Sanhedrin to account for their teaching because the Sanhedrin were angry at being made the guilty ones in Jesus' death. Once again Peter says they are all witnesses to the truth of Jesus being the Savior and of the Holy Spirit being given to those who obey Jesus. Most of the Sanhedrin want to kill the apostles but Gamaliel advises restraint, saying that if God is with them there isn't a thing they can do. They have the apostles flogged and let go. They rejoice at being persecuted in Jesus' name.
Obey God or myself? Obey God, of course.
But in practice, it seems I obey myself or other human initiatives instead. That's part of the reason life is hard. I make it hard.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a parent of a student in my school. She and her husband were in desperate straits about their son.
I said they would likely end up in our church because of their suffering.
I went on to talk about God giving us hard trainers in order to make us listen to God, and her son was her trainer. She agreed.
She said she and her husband had actually started praying together and discussed their Sunday Christian attitude.
She said she could see how God was using her son to make her face herself and her sins.
Because I was obeying God at that moment, our conversation led to her application of praying more and recovering her worship.
But what didn't go so well for me that day was sorting through the forest of applications for a couple of teaching positions we will have at my school next year. It's my job to sift them and select the handful for interviews.
Instead of following my prescription to the mother, which was to pray more, I didn't pray at all over the applications!
Once again I relied on myself.
The result was confusion, a headache and applications sprawled in chaos over my desk. A mess inside and out!
So my application today is to pray when I get to school and silently pray over each application and trust to God's guidance in the selection process.
Then pray for his insight on who to choose as our new teachers after the interviews.
It's God's school and he knows who needs to come for reasons only he knows. I just get in the way.
Lord, help me seek you more diligently in my daily life. Thank you for your trainers. Guide me in the way I need to go for your glory not mine.
