"Reverence" (Acts 14:26-28)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/20/2018 10:17 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                            Focus:  “Reverence” 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                     Reference:  Acts 14:26-28  

            Message of the verses:  “26 From there they sailed to Antioch, from which they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had accomplished. 27 When they had arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they spent a long time with the disciples.”

            I have been around missionaries a lot since I became a believer in 1974.  When I joined the first church after becoming a believer I was placed on the missionary committee along with my wife who knew more about the many missionaries that our church supported than any person in the church.  I later became the chairman of the missionary committee and truly enjoyed when the missionaries came to speak at our church.  The way our church works then and the way the church works that we go today is that missionaries come in to present their work and after that there is a decision as to whether or not we will give money to them on a monthly basis to support them for the work that they do.  Once a missionary is off what is called “deputation” they are ready to go to the field that the Lord has called them to go.  Most missionaries then will serve a total of four years on the field and then after that time is up they will come back to report to the churches that are funding them.  As we read through our verses this morning we can see that the way that I have described how we work with missionaries comes from this section as Paul and Barnabas were sent out by the church at Antioch and then were on the field starting new churches and then after a while they came back to the church at Antioch who sent them out to report to them what the Lord had done through their work. 

            There are some differences today than what we see in this passage.  Let me give an example:  We have some friends who began their missionary work in Africa and they stayed there for a fairly long time helping to begin churches with other missionaries who were there.  After a while they believed that the Lord was calling them to go to Vietnam and they stayed there helping to begin churches until they were forced to leave by the government.  Next they went to Cambodia and worked to begin a church there which took a fairly long time.  The wife is a medical doctor and so she worked at the hospital there and in other places and the husband was the preacher along with being a professor in Bible studies.  It took them a fairly long time to make sure that the church that was begun there to become stabilized and when that time came and a Cambodian pastor was in place they moved back to the US and retired.  Well that is not exactly true when I say retired I mean that the churches that were supporting them did not have to do so any more, but this wonderful couple went back to Cambodia and also served in Bangladesh for three months last year and are planning to do the same this year.  It has been a great privilege of ours to get to know this couple and even help support them from time to time as they have followed the way that God has designed for missionaries to work as seen in this passage.  It is even our privilege to have one of their children to stay with us earlier this year and we are praying about whether or not to begin to support her as she will be going to Myanmar to help to translate the Bible in one of the languages that is in that country.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I desire to want to continue to do missionary work, and I believe that is by writing and continue to write my Spiritual Diaries and put them onto my blogs.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust that the Lord will give me the right words to write that go onto my Spiritual Diaries that the Holy Spirit can use to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ as He uses them in a way that He desires to bring about salvation, growth, and revival in the lives of those who read them.

Answer to yesterdays Bible question:  “Jeremiah.”

Today’s Bible question:  “From which direction did the wind blow that took away the plague of locusts?”

Answer in our next SD.

3/20/2018 10:52 AM  

As I was posting this SD onto my blog this morning I saw that I had missed a short portion from the outline that I follow from John MacArthur’s commentary entitled “Commitment” which covers verse 24-25 of Acts 14 and so I will quote from his commentary this very short paragraph after I quote Acts 14:24-25.

24 They passed through Pisidia and came into Pamphylia. 25 When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia.”

            “Exhausted by their travels and hard work in the proclamation of the gospel, the two missionaries headed home.  Having passed through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia, to the city of Perga.  Others may have rested before going down to the seaport of Attalia and booking passage for home, but not Paul and Barnabas.  Such was their commitment to their evangelistic calling and they did not leave until they had spoken the word in Perga…Paul and Barnabas apparently had not preached in Perga the first time they were there.  Leaving nothing undone, they proceeded to do so.  They were committed, no matter what their circumstances, to fulfilling their calling.”