How Can We Stand in God's Way?

Readings:
I Chronicles 19
Acts 11

Focus:
Acts 11:17b:"How could I stand in God's way?"

Peter told the other disciples that he had clearly seen that God wanted to have a saving relationship with the Gentiles (the non-Jews) just as much as he wanted to have a saving relationship with the Jews. This was outside of Peter's initial comfort zone. It wasn't what he had learned about how God was to be worshipped. But God showed him that the old ritual law was no longer operative; after Jesus, only the moral law remained constant. Even if Peter and the other disciples weren't comfortable with that at first, how could they stand in God's way?

This can happen to us, too. Maybe in order to reach out to people we have to endure different types of activities or music while spending time with them than we would really prefer. Or we may end up moving somewhere we hadn't at first thought we would like, in order to take a job that we feel God wants for us. These things may not be what we thought we had in mind, but in each case, we may see that it is clearly God's will for us to do those things. How can we stand in God's way?

Like Peter and the other disciples, we will find that once we let God have his way, we will benefit from it too. It will turn out that there will be surprises of blessings that we never could have foreseen.