Circles of Influence

This week in our message at Living Word Galena we looked at an account in the bible from the book of Acts. It’s the time known as the ascension. This is the account of Jesus being taken up into heaven. You can find the whole story here, but here’s a quick summary. 

Jesus takes his disciples up on a mountain for one last teaching moment. Except this wasn’t a teaching moment that Jesus was going to initiate, it was one that he was going to let the disciples initiate. So they start with a question, Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

I’m sure glad I’m not Jesus. And you should be too! Because in that moment I most certainly would have had one of those eye rolling moments. I probably would have told the disciples how dumb of a question that was, but not Jesus! He didn’t say anything of the sort. He just told them that was the wrong question and then launched into this final teaching moment. Here’s the verse that was the focus of our time on Sunday, Acts 1:8 –

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Now we won’t spend a lot of time on the Holy Spirit right now because we’ll spend an entire service on the Holy Spirit in a couple of weeks. But this message was about four locations known as Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the end of the earth. Admittedly most, if not all of us, don’t live in any of these geographic areas. So what might they have to do with us?

Actually, I believe we can learn a lot from these four locations! Jerusalem was where everyone was the same. They thought and taught the same. They followed the same rules and had the same beliefs. Jerusalem is like our modern church. It’s where we all go for one purpose. We go to worship expecting to hear about Jesus’ love and forgiveness. So when Jesus tells us to be his witnesses in Jerusalem he’s telling us to share him with people who know him.

But not everyone in our lives think and act and believe exactly like we do which means we’ll leave Jerusalem and move outward into Judea next. Judea is the place where people are like us. They are the people where we live, work and play. Judea is our neighborhood, cubicle at work, dorm at college and the place where we workout. These are people who may or may not know Jesus but Jesus knows them. So here we’re called to go one step farther.

Then we move out yet one more circle to a place Jesus calls Samaria. If you know Bible history you’ll know that Samaria was an enemy of Judea. These two people groups did not get along at all! So Jesus here is teaching us that we’re to be his witnesses even to those who in our eyes don’t deserve God’s love. To them Jesus says we’re to witness. We’re to pray for them and love them. And show them kindness and grace. This looks like loving the unloveable.

These first three places are all around us everyday. We’ll see people who believe like us, are similar to us and who dislike us just about every day. But Jesus also recognizes that there will come a time when you have to make it a point to go somewhere new for the express purpose of sharing God’s love. This is the final location – the end of the earth. No we don’t have to go to a foreign country but we do have to get out of our boxes a little.

So the long and short is simple. Wherever you go and with whomever you go there, Jesus wants us to be mindful that we are his witnesses. Share the love and grace of God where you live, work and play because all people need to know him.