[This reflection by Martin Shorey was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 26/May/2024]
Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait …
Acts 1 v4
Last Saturday us HBC guys gathered together at church to test our brain power. We had 4 rooms, and each room contained an object to find with the help of various clues, within an allotted time. My team managed the first room well, searching the room for clues, and finally discovering the location of a stolen jewel. Things didn’t go so smoothly in the second room.
We needed to find a hidden bank card, but rather than carefully searching the room for pointers, we went mad (or at least I did) throwing cushions off chairs, tipping out drawers, and generally turning the place upside down. After 20 mins we finally gave up and asked for help. It turns out that in the midst of my animated search I had knocked the Scrabble board which contained the vital clue that would have told us the location of the missing bank card. I felt a bit stupid.
Last Sunday I wasn’t at HBC because I had kindly been invited to preach at Redhill Baptist. That particular Sunday was Pentecost, the birthday of the church, and the time when the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on all those early followers of Jesus, empowering and equipping them for the task Jesus had given, to tell the world about him. The title of my sermon was ‘The Importance of Patience’, and it picked up on Jesus’ instruction to his disciples to ‘wait’ rather than dive straight into the task before them. After all, Jesus’ task would be impossible without the gift of the Holy Spirit to aid them.
Patience isn’t my strong suite, and I do have a tendency to rush in without too much thought, hence the disaster last Saturday with the missing bank card. How about you? Do you live at 100mph? Do you leap before you think? Do you make a decision before you have all the facts? Although action is perhaps preferable to doing nothing, it is important to wait, weigh things up, take advice, pray about it, and slow down.
Is there something weighing on your mind? Do you have an important decision to make? Are you tempted to just go for it and do it in your own strength. The reality is that the tasks we are given by God require, in fact necessitate, the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore sometimes its really important that we wait, pray, and do things in God’s time rather than our own.
Very rarely are things an emergency, so I think we can afford a little thinking (and praying) space.
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Last week’s reflection: Yet Not I, But Through Christ In Me by David Makanjuola
Contributed by Martin Shorey; © Martin Shorey