Today's passage is Acts 8:4-25.
The persecution scatters the church. Philip goes to Samaria and converts many with the gospel message and with healings and exorcisms. He baptizes them in Jesus' name. When Peter and John arrive they bapize everyone with the Holy Spirit through laying on of hands. When Simon the magician sees this he offers them money to be able to do the same thing. Peter severely chastizes him.
Rather than destroying the church with persecution, the church spread because of it. The persecution was like a seed pod being broken up and the seeds sown to the wind. What looks like disaster turns out to be a great gift.
Without the disaster of my first wife's death, my ill-considered affaire, my job loss and my world shrunk to a room in the YMCA, would I have come to Korea and Wooridle Church and found the depth of my sin and a wholely new dependence on the Lord and trust in him? Not likely.
One of my problems was searching for happiness and security in people, places, things instead of in God.
Stability outside of God and his word does not exist.
When I looked for social and emotional stability in a happy, secure life as a teacher in Carolina with a daughter and what I hoped would be a new wife, everything blew up in my face.
I was trying to control my world, trying to stabilize it with my efforts and counting on God to bless my efforts rather than direct them.
I was blind to reality and deaf to God. God smashed me and my world in order to get my attention and regenerate me.
I didn't like the process. I was full of anger, resentment and fear.
I was angry that my ideas were tossed aside the way I sometimes toss student ideas aside.
I was afraid of walking into a situation I couldn't see the end to and couldn't control.
I resented having to lay down my pride of self-sufficiency for trust in God's loving care.
Being a slave to my fear is a terrible way to live.
There is no trust when you fear, and there is no stability without God.
I just didn't seem to learn that until I was broken like Job and the Jerusalem church.
Lord, forgive my efforts to control my circumstances out of fear.
Forgive me for seeking the fantasy of stability outside of trust in you.
Inspire me to seek you always and meditate daily on your word to truly serve you and others.
