Acts 1:8 (NIV)
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
CONSIDER THIS
Today’s story comes to us from Amy Britton. First I want you to notice the way the Holy Spirit gave her this assignment and how she carried it until the time was right. Notice how it began as a good vision but grew, by the Holy Spirit’s movement, into a God vision. Notice all the moving parts and how it involved so many people. I’ll be interested to see what other things you notice. Read the story below in Amy’s own words and if you listen, in her own voice.
A few years back, in early February, I was talking with my dad, who mentioned that he was planning a trip to visit his parents leaving on Maundy Thursday and being gone for about a week. I negotiated that if he were willing to wait until Good Friday to leave, I could go with him. I hadn’t seen my grandparents in a while. Besides, the next week was Spring Break so I could easily take a week off work. Dad was amenable to this plan.
For a few years, I had been aware that there was a Lutheran Indian Ministries site in my dad’s hometown. I had been dreaming about organizing some sort of mission project for this at my church whenever I might get up to Bemidji next. So after my dad and I made our rough outline of plans, I got in contact with the pastor at the Lutheran Indian Ministry site in Bemidji to ask how my church in Kentucky could support them. We ended up determining that Bibles would be very helpful for the ministry. When I hung up the phone, I was thinking, “I go to a tiny church with minimal resources, and Bibles are expensive.” My original goal for this project was to donate six Bibles to the ministry. Little did I know I had an Amy-sized goal for a God-sized idea.
After a couple of phone calls, my goal jumped to twelve, and then twenty, although I was fairly certain twenty was an unachievable goal. Meanwhile, my dad was talking to my sister, who negotiated for us to wait to leave until after church on Easter. A few days later, as my church officially launched the Bibles for Bemidji project on Ash Wednesday, my goal crept up to thirty Bibles. Then forty.
Meanwhile, my dad told my mom about our trip to visit his parents, and my mom, who had Easter responsibilities at her church in Alaska, said she wanted to go with us. We decided we couldn’t wait until Tuesday to leave, but we did arrange for my mom to take a red-eye flight that would arrive in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday morning. We were to pick her up in Madison, which was exactly the halfway point on our journey, and continue north.
As a friend of my dad’s said when he heard about our plans: “Let me get this straight—you’re collecting three people from three different cities, traveling hundreds of miles in a fourteen-year-old vehicle, at a time of year when you could easily find yourself facing ice and snow, and halfway through the trip picking up another passenger after an overnight transcontinental flight. What could go wrong?” Amazingly enough, because the Spirit was directing everything about this trip, nothing went wrong,
Back to the Bibles project—my goal kept creeping up, and when it became apparent we would get more than eighty Bibles, I gave up on setting goals and simply went with guessing. When my best guess exceeded 120, I gave up on guessing. When I was talking with the pastor to make arrangements for delivering these Bibles, he asked about how many Bibles to expect—I could only respond, “a lot.” By then I really couldn’t get more specific.
Because the Holy Spirit had worked through my sister to put off our departure until after church on Easter my church was able to conclude this Lent mission project with a blessing of the Bibles during our Easter worship. After church, my dad, sister, and I had a rendezvous in Louisville, where we loaded the Bibles into my parents’ van and started the long trek north. The next morning we retrieved my mom from the Madison airport and continued north to Bemidji, where we delivered 132 Bibles to the mission—a far cry from my original goal of six. I had asked folks to pray that we not run into any snowstorms, tornadoes, or deer. God’s grace brought us through all three unscathed. And I returned home with a new appreciation for God-sized ideas.
THE PRAYER
Abba Father! Thank you for this story of abundance and the Word of God. Thank you for Amy’s initiative and the way you did abundantly above all she asked or even imagined. We pray for each person who now holds one of these Bibles, for the Word of God to work the miracles of faith, transformation, encouragement, and of teaching, training, rebuking, and correcting. May the Holy Spirit who inspired every word of the Bible now inspire every one of these new readers. Open up the horizons of our visions and give us the courage to take simple and even small steps of obedience to the assignments of your Spirit. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
THE QUESTION
We can tend to make two errors in taking on visionary assignments of the Holy Spirit. We can think way too small or way too big; timidity or grandiosity. Which side do you tend to err on?
THE HYMN
Today let’s sing our Saturday song, “Sanctuary.” Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true. With thanksgiving I’ll be a living sanctuary for you. Such a profound prayer of consecration. This is our story, dear friends. This is our song.
For the Awakening,
J.D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com
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P.S. Holy Spirit Stories Welcome
I would love it if you would send a story of faith from your life we might use on a Saturday in the future. We will be glad to attach your name or a pseudonym or anonymity—it’s up to you. It can be a story of coming to faith, a story of transformation, a story of healing, deliverance, suffering and sufficient grace, family reconciliation, prodigal returns, answered prayer, and so forth. A word count of 500–800 words works well. We can’t guarantee publication, but we assure you of our prayerful discernment. You can reply to this email with your story and it will come to me.