by Pastor Danny
I once heard a story of a women who, when baking her holiday hams, would cut them into perfect squares, wasting a large portion of the meat. Her husband asked why she did this. Since she'd picked up the habit from her mom, she decided to call her and ask why they'd always done it that way. The mother said, "Well that's because my mom always did it." So the lady decided to call and ask grandma why they had, for years, cut the ham into a square. Grandma said, “Oh, that's because the hams were too big for the old oven I used to have...”
Acts 10:14-15; 34-35 14 - “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”...Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right."
Here in chapter 10, we see how Peter was given a vision of clean and unclean things. God revealed to Peter that His mission is to spread the good news to the Gentiles. In our culture, we don’t deal with clean or unclean things like those Jews did. We also don’t have a problem with the Gospel being shared with the Gentiles. My guess would be that most of us are Gentiles. But during Peter's day, this would have been a big deal.
If you read Acts 10 you can see that Peter was having a hard time with this idea.....Peter had been putting God in a box. That is something many of us struggle with: putting God in a box, because that's not how we do things. We don’t like the idea of getting out of our comfort zone. We don’t like the idea of being criticized by others when we try something different. Pastor Keith made the comment on Day 2 that we are creatures of habit. That's so true. We have a hard time doing new things or getting out of old ruts. I believe many churches are failing to effectively spread the Gospel because we're guilty of this very issue.
Like Peter, we must allow God to give us fresh wisdom and insight--to do things we have never done before so that others may come to know Him. The Jews were shocked to the Gentiles were getting saved. They were shocked that the Holy Spirit had fallen on the Gentiles and that the good news was for them, too. Sometimes we're guilty of the same thing. We put God in a box and stop taking Jesus to the people that need it most. We understand that the Gospel message is for everyone. But sometimes we aren’t willing to go out of our own comfort zones to do what is necessary to reach others for him. Many of us hope we can live our lives and people can see we are Christians just by example. Many of us hope people will come to our church, hear the word, and be saved. Many of us may justify our lack of evangelism by making the claim “this isn’t my spiritual gift”.
Don’t put God in a box because that’s how you’ve always done things. Be open to doing things differently to reach the lost. We have been given the Great Commission. A mandate to go and share the good news of what Christ has done.
Day 10's reading comes from the story just referenced--Acts 10--and Psalm 148.