Engaging with our Mission 20: Ready to Help?
The midweek Bible study was a highlight of the week for the members of Hilltop Baptist Church. Their Minister regularly received invitations from around the world to share her clear, creative and deep approach to Bible teaching and whenever she was home the church would be packed full of people waiting to listen to her inspirational words of wisdom.
As they met one stormy evening, they had just begun to read Acts 8 when the doors to the church flew open and someone ran in shouting ‘help, help, the river has burst it’s banks and the village is flooded’.
Within moments the church members were busy and active. A number headed down into the valley to offer help to people who were trapped or in trouble, some got busy in the kitchen and others began to get the building ready as an emergency shelter for those who were now homeless.
A disaster had happened and Hilltop Baptist Church had risen to the challenge. They were willing to drop everything to save lives and to offer shelter and food to people who had lost everything.
Many weeks later and the church programme had returned to normal. Once again there was a packed church and the Minister read from Acts 8, explaining that God had told the early church to take the good news to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the Earth. The church had remained in Jerusalem though until persecution had driven the Christians out of Jerusalem and into the cities and lands beyond. God brought some good out of those terrible circumstances though; as his people were shaken they fled for their lives but they also rose to the challenge and shared the good news about Jesus wherever they went.
The Minister spoke and encouraged the church over the way that they had dropped everything to respond to an urgent humanitarian need in their community. She then finished with these words: ‘What are we willing to drop in order that we might share the life changing good news with the people around us?’
To consider:
· Jesus demonstrated the good news as he healed and blessed people and also as he talked about the gospel and the Kingdom of God. Do we prioritise one of these two approaches? How can we follow Jesus’ example in using both approaches?
· Are we willing to drop things to offer spiritual health, life and rescue to a world that is a spiritual disaster zone in the same way that we would drop everything to offer urgent practical help following a humanitarian crisis?
· In Acts 8 the church is shaken and scattered to the point where they end up in the wider world that God had told them that they should be witnesses in as well. Has God been trying to shake the Church you are a part of in any way? How have you responded?
· Are we more interested in knowing what the Bible says than we are in living out what it teaches us?
