A couple of Sundays ago was Pentecost - the day when Christians celebrate God sending the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 2. This reading was a part of our E100 Bible reading programme a few weeks ago, and was followed by two weeks in the book of Acts reading stories of persecution, evangelism, church planting and church growth, wrestling with issues, escape from prison...
They were indeed exciting times - and I wonder if we ever read Acts and wish things were just a little more exciting these days. But surely they could be. Could we even say that they should be. The Spirit that came upon the disciples in Acts 2 is the same Spirit that God promises to believers today.
I was listening to a long term missionary speaking on Sunday evening. One of the things he said in response to a question asked about why mission organisations are seeing a drop in long term mission personnel is that we, as Christians in the west, have become comfortable and risk averse.
Part of being risk averse is that we never willingly put ourselves anywhere near a situation where we are going to be out of our depth or beyond our resources.
The trouble is that those are the very places where our faith will be strengthened, and we will have to rely on God rather than on ourselves. Those are the places where we will see the Spirit at work, because we can't do it for ourselves. Those are the exciting places.
We don't need to join a long term mission team canoeing up the Amazon to put ourselves beyond our own resources. If you're a Christian reading this then I'm sure there is something that comes to mind when asked the question, what is it that God is asking you to do - that you haven't done yet?
