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  • About Us
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    • Adult >
      • Classes and Spiritual Formation Opportunities
      • Small Group Locations & Times
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Mission-Shaped Church - Acts 2:1-13

5/25/2021

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Pentecost is the birthday of the church, and it is one of those “holy days” we tend to forget – much like the “shy member” of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. 

We can tend to overlook the power of Pentecost, and, therefore, bypass the workings of the Spirit: for, as Christians, how do we understand the creation of a new community by the Spirit, where we are to share “all things in common”? Or how do we carry out the mission of the Spirit that shares the love of God in any language with every tribe and people? Or how do we ask ourselves what the Holy Spirit is bringing about, or how God’s Spirit is forming us?

Pentecost is that day when we realize that the church is more than a voluntary organization. It is that, but it is also more than that: on Pentecost, we affirm that the church is both human and divine. All too human, yes, but also a creation of God, which calls forth our response as people and asks of us: Have you received the Holy Spirit? Are you open to what the Spirit is doing? Do you want to be part of the Spirit’s mission? 

If we are to consider how we are to find our place in God’s mission, then we cannot leave out the power and presence of the Holy Spirit; we cannot somehow think the mission leaves out the Spirit with us. 

In fact, that is the very point of this devotion: Pentecost is the day when the Spirit creates and shapes the church for its mission. It is the day when the Spirit comes upon the disciples and fills them with power, and moves them, and shakes and even disturbs them, into becoming a new force of transformation. 

That is Pentecost – the event where the people who gathered in Jerusalem “from every nation under heaven” were able to communicate and understand each other in their own language (Acts 2:1-3). Indeed, as Luke tells us, the people who had “gathered in one place” were all “amazed and astonished” when the Holy Spirit came. They didn’t understand what it meant (Acts 2:12). 

As we celebrate Pentecost, how may we understand the Spirit? How may we seek to receive what God wants to give us? How may we join in the Spirit’s work?
​

Pastor Andy Kinsey
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Looking for God, Looking for Me - Acts 16:13-15

5/18/2021

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Do you ever find yourself asking, “is there more to what I have, who I am, what I am doing, or how I am doing it?”  Do you wonder what more is out there?  What more you could do with what you have?  What more God God could do in and through you? What more is waiting for you, your family, your relationships, your money, experience, gifts, and skills?  

Paul and Lydia were two significant believers in the life of the early church.  Paul, an apostle, and Lydia a businesswoman.  Both had the desire to do something more with their life.  Both wanted to find their place in God’s bigger plan for them and God’s work on earth.  Paul was reaching and teaching people for Jesus but wanted to do more.  Lydia had not yet heard of Jesus, but believed in the God of Israel and wanted more out of her life.  Although the answer to the “more” question manifested itself differently for each of them, the exciting, powerful, and beautiful thing about their story is that the answer was found in God.  That doesn’t sound like much, three verses, Acts 16:13-15 contain one of history’s greatest faith conversion stories ever!

In those three verses God does more than either Lydia or Paul, or us for that matter, could imagine.  In those three verses, the good news of Jesus crossed into Europe, into one of the most strategic Roman colonies in history, by way of and through the heart of a woman!  She also owned her own home, which became the base of operation for Paul and the apostles for the work of the church.  In three verses, Christianity crosses into Europe and the first church is established.  Both because Lydia sought more from her faith and her God. 

Lydia was not originally from Philippi.  She was from the region Thyrtira (thigh-ya-tie-rah), in the province called Lydia, in the country of Asia Minor.   The area of Lydia had five large cities: Ephesus, Smyrna, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Thyatira, all located on or near the chief rivers and connected with coastal cities by well traveled roads. (All the Women of the Bible 222).  She would have had connections all along those major routes, why?  Because remember she was a dealer in fine purple cloth.  She was a business woman who made and sold fine purple cloth and textiles, a skill only certain women from a certain area knew how to do. This meant that the good news of Jesus that Paul and the other apostles were teaching and preaching could go anywhere. 

When God does more, it’s way more!

The Lydian market, as it was called, had enjoyed for generations a wide and valuable trade throughout the Graeco-Roman world.  This woman evidently was so closely allied with her old province of Lydia, that her personal name reflected her connection to the place and the people (All the Women of the Bible 222).  

Could it be that because Lydia was looking for God looking for her that she found her place in God’s mission?  We are told she believed, became baptized, her and all her household.  Then think about how far reaching the possibilities were from there because of the location of Philippi and Lydia’s business contacts / connections; roads and trade routes went in every direction from that starting point.  

She found her place because she was praying, seeking, and opening herself to the possibility that God was seeking her (N.T. Wright 63) and indeed came to know that God would use her to impact the spread of the good news across the known world.  

Finding your place in God’s mission is about listening, watching, and waiting for more.  It is about seeking more out of your faith and yourself.  It is about knowing that God’s “more” is far greater than ours if we but seek and trust it.  It is about looking for God looking for you and then trusting God to use who you are and what you have. 

I wonder how God is using you to reveal God’s self - God’s love, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness to those around you, to those who need it most.   I wonder, are you looking for God looking for you?  May we all find our place in God’s mission and continue to share the good news of Jesus.

Amen  

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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The Detour is the Road - Acts 11:1-13

5/11/2021

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I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I was downtown in a local antique shop when I saw a map of guess where? Wyoming.  My heart jumped like it does when you see something that brings fond memories and strong connections.  But that was not the source of my shock and disbelief.  Rather it was the fact that there was a ten dollar price tag on the map.  Ten bucks for a map someone picked up for free at a gas station.  Probably while traveling through Wyoming and got lost.  A map my parents had multiple copies of when I was growing up. One for the car. One for dad’s truck. One for the camper. And one up at the cabin in case you needed to find the name of some dirt road you were on. 

Many would argue that paper maps are going the way of black and white TVs, VHS tapes, and dvds. Many would say we are at the point of simply not needing them anymore.  But are we there yet? Will paper maps someday be something we only see in antique stores and museums? 

“Not so fast,” says Joel Minster, chief cartographer for Rand McNally, the nation’s largest mapmaker. “I don’t think paper maps are going anywhere, but people are using them differently, more as a companion to the online or digital version.  Despite the ease and convenience of technology, batteries go dead, spilled coffee can fry a GPS unit, or you may be in a place that has a weak signal or no signal at all. Not to mention, GPS is sometimes just wrong.”

I wonder if those first apostles ever thought they were being rerouted or detoured to places unknown and unexpected. I wonder if they ever thought their travels would leave us a map of sorts showing us not only where they went and how they got there, but where and how God was moving in the life of the early church and how it wasn’t always the course their GPS had planned out! 

In Acts chapter 11:1-13, when Peter goes to Joppa and eats with the Gentile Roman Centurion Cornelius, the other apostles and believers in the group think he has walked off the map - he didn’t follow the intended or agreed upon route.  Their voice of criticism sounded like that of a disgruntled GPS system calling for Peter to recalculate and get back on track with their original GPS coordinates, which was limited to and only about the way and law of God’s chosen people, the Jews.  Anything outside of that Old Testament law was considered off the map. 

Peter explains to them that God had shown him the context of a much larger map that revealed the new road God was building toward inclusion of the Gentiles, the outsiders, in the church. Peter took another road and found that the Holy Spirit was there all along.  God‘s command to Peter was essentially to march off the long-held maps that Peter and his people walked for thousands of years - to trust the detour; learn from it, and recognize the value of the experience.  God’s vision to Peter was carving out a new route that would bring Jews and Gentiles together.  
Because Peter marched off the old route, he begins to see how God’s plan for the whole world is unfolding like a huge gas station map.  Cornelius had also received a vision from God which altered his maps as a Roman centurion and a citizen who likely had seen a lot of the world. The Holy Spirit sent Peter, a Jew, and Cornelius, a Gentile,  off their prescribed routes to meet each other as an example of the new route God was showing the church.  No longer would Jews and Gentiles run separate paths but they would serve the same Lord as part of the same church. 

Sometimes on our journey of faith, the detour is the road.  So goes the lyrics of a song I recently heard.   The detour is the road.  It’s on the detour we are our most vulnerable individually and communally, and we discover that can be our strength. It’s on the detour we feel the most out of control, lost, or disoriented and discover that’s exactly where we need to be for God to teach us, use us, shape us and show us the truth.  It’s on the detour we come to see a path forward or a passage through that was not visible any other way.   It is the detour that teaches us more about ourselves, others, and more about God.  It is the detour that often brings us back to center, transforms our perspective, broadens our understanding, shows us a better way, and opens the eyes of our mind and the ears of our heart to the fullness of God. 

People of God, we have to be like Peter, and trust the movement of the Holy Spirit.  We have to get out of our own way and trust God knows what to do and how to do it.  We have to open the whole map, take the detours, and let go of those internal navigation systems that hold us back, block others out, or otherwise limit God’s Holy Spirit.   We have to trust, the detour is the road. 

May it be so, amen. 

​Pastor Jenothy Irvine


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Finding Your Place in God's Mission - Acts 16:6-10

5/4/2021

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In the Book of Acts, Paul has a desire to go to Asia Minor to preach the gospel. It is his second missionary journey, and he knows there is a need. 

But the Spirit of Jesus closes the door on Paul, and for whatever reason, God doesn’t want him to go there just yet. Instead, God opens up another door: to Macedonia (Acts 16:8). 

This is one of the ways God works: we might think we are to go to one place, and then we get a call to go to another place. In this case, Christ calls Paul to go over to Macedonia. Hence the name of the passage: the Macedonian call. In fact, there is an old gospel song: “We have heard the Macedonian call. We will work for Jesus and his will obey.” The passage and the song are about how we need to pay attention to how God can use us: How can God use our resources and gifts? How can Christ direct our passion? How can the Spirit help us to see the needs of others?  

These are wonderful questions to help us in finding our place in God’s mission. The answers might not come automatically, but they can emerge over time and with clarity. 
​

So how might we pray and hear what the Spirit of Christ is calling us to do? How might we listen to God’s voice? The answers we receive will often surprise us!

​Pastor Andy Kinsey


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Grace United Methodist Church
1300 E Adams Dr,
Franklin, IN 46131

Phone: 317-736-7962
grace@franklingrace.org

Weekend  Worship Services
Saturday: 5:30pm 
Sunday: 9:00am & 11:00am

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