Waiting in Athens

Acts 17:16-21
Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

Sermon Transcript:

Good morning. I know the week after spring break it’s just tough to get back on the horse again and get your kids up in the morning and yourself in the morning. Uh, but here we are. Um, wanted to just highlight one thing that, uh, happened.

Uh, welcome to you here, and those of you that are in Collingswood, I wanna talk to you guys in Collingswood as well. Um, our church yesterday hosted a, uh, a unique event. This was the, I’m gonna get this right, the South Jersey Speed Solvers, Rubik’s Cube competition. How many of you knew we had that yesterday?

More than a hundred competitors. Uh, Sean Mack, uh, down at the Collingswood campus, who is an incredible cuber as they call them, or solver. I don’t, what would we call you, Sean? I’m not really sure. Uh, and then also Matt Pugh here and their families really, uh, did an incredible job inviting their friends, people in this community, uh, and as far up as New York and down to.

Uh, that came, there was a world record holder that was here yesterday that, uh, was just insane. I have some videos if you wanna see them. Our very own pastor Jared, entered the competition. He is, you can go find his times on the cubing website. I’ll leave it at that. Uh, it was a really fun time, uh, and for all that were part of that incredible way of opening the church doors.

Uh, so well we’ve come through a number of weeks, uh, of Easter leading up to Resurrection Sunday. And we are back officially in the Book of Acts, but only for this week. Next week’s a little bit of a change, and then we’re back again, hopefully for a, a longer stint. But leading up to Resurrection Sunday, I wanna just show you this, uh, visual we had.

Um, that was kind of something we talked about at the very beginning, but it’s even more appropriate now. Coming right out of, uh, Easter. So we have these, these few things that happened. Uh, Mary and the women at the tomb, they saw Jesus after the resurrection, Simon Peter, the disciples. Then 500 followers, 40 days Post Resurrection is the beginning of the Book of Acts where we have Jesus ascending to heaven and the decension of the Holy Spirit on God’s people.

So what we have as we come back to the Book of Acts, I know it’s been more than a month, we really have a selected history of the early church. Remember Luke is the author here, and he’s collected this data. It’s not eyewitness, although he goes to eyewitness people to collect all this data together. And he’s writing this two-part letter to a man named Theophilus, who we know was a man of great means and influence.

The first volume of this story was the Book of Luke, which really is the, the work of Jesus through the life, death, the resurrection leading us to this point. And now volume two of Luke’s work is the book of Acts, the Spirit alive, the spirit of Jesus at work through his followers. And we talked, uh, a while back about ways you can come and approach any book of the Bible, but particularly the Book of Acts.

It is history, it is church history. And so when you hear the word history, you either turn into a scholar and you want to get dates, you want to get times, places, people, new insights, all good things. Or you turn into a casual admirer who was dragged to the museum and you didn’t want to be. We are honest people, right?

It’s okay to raise your hand, uh, or potentially you come this morning. And then I’m encouraging all of us to come in those first few ways, but also as a disciple of Jesus, we study because it’s the unfolding mission of Christ in his church, witnessing his spirit, keeping in step with him. Now, what is the Holy Spirit doing?

Uh, those are ways we can approach this book, but what is he doing? One of the things we talked about at the very beginning of the Act sermon series is there really, uh, a number of intentions, a number of things. The Holy Spirit is doing objectives of his work. See if you can remember any of these. We’ll put ’em on the screen here for you.

The first one is to carry God’s gospel, which is the good news to all the nation. To carry God’s gospel to all the nations. We got those postures. There we go. The second one is to sustain God’s people amidst every opposition. The third is to fulfill God’s sovereign purposes and the fourth to unite God’s church, to gather us all together.

And, um, maybe you’re familiar with this picture too. This is the, uh, if we think about the way the spirit works and he talked about, uh, that he would send these people out, the disciples out to Jerusalem, to Judea. There it is, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. If you look at the left there on the, the bottom, uh, you see Acts one through seven is really focused in this intersection, and then it kind of builds out from there.

We are in Acts chapter 17, which makes us to the ends of the Earth section right now. We’re getting there, but we’re not to chapter 28 just yet. Um, and if you, again, were following along for me, this was a really helpful study to just refresh. Where in the world are we in the book of Acts, chapter 17 finds us on the second lap of Paul’s missionary journeys.

The first one here you’ll see is kind of a, a more local area. He starts in Antioch and then begins out on the blue root and comes back on the red, um, making some stops along the way. And we are on the second lap of this journey, which is a larger journey. And, uh, starting in Antioch and coming up through Timothy joins Paul and Silas here in Lira and I iconium, they move through Asia and actually we’re prevented from speaking in Asia.

And so they moved on through Asia, up through Macedonia and our might cut off, I’m sorry. It’s probably better on that one over there, but they’re making their way through. The last sermon that we heard in Acts chapter, uh, 1617, was about Berea. The people who received God’s word. With all joy. They were eager to hear God’s word.

And after that there was some, uh, things that happened because as they passed, passed through, uh, leaving Macedonia, passing through Thessalonia, Fasika, uh, there were some Jews that came to stir up and make some, uh, difficulty for Paul and his traveling friends. And so what happened was they moved on quickly and as they were in Berea, these Thessalonians came and tried to stir up more, uh, dissension among them.

And so as that happened, Silas and Timothy thought it was best if Paul would go ahead onto the next stop. They would kind of tie things up and um, we’ll move the troublemaker as we call him Paul, uh, into Athens. And so Paul is sent on a ship to Athens and he arrives there. And that’s where we are in chapter 17.

If you want to grab your Bibles, there is a pew Bible there. If you don’t have one, you can tap. You can find a Bible. Look on your neighbors. It’s on the screen. Let’s read the word of God together. Uh, here’s what it says in Acts chapter 17, 16 through 21. Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens again, that is Silas and Timothy.

He’s waiting for them. His spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was filled with idols. So he reasoned in the synagogues with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, what does this Babbler wish to say?

Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting for. You bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore, what these things mean.

Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. Lord, we thank you for this book and as we come to your word this morning, we ask, Lord, we plead that we would not just be casual admirers to a, uh, a history book, but that we would be your disciples, your children who are wowed.

By the way, the Holy Spirit is at work, Lord, the unfolding narrative of your church. We here in this room are recipients of our participants in. And we live in oneness with the author of this story, Christ, we thank you Lord for inviting us to hear and to learn this morning. We pray these things in your name.

Amen. Amen. Well, you’ll see the, the title of today’s sermon is Waiting in Athens Zinger, right? So far in the book of Acts, we’ve witnessed some exciting things and in two weeks there will be a really exciting thing, but today is just a waiting day. So if you wanna read ahead and get excited, do that today.

Is the waiting day kind of a, like, maybe a bit of a dud on paper? If you were to look at this at first pass? Actually, I had a pastor in our church, I’m not gonna name names Jerry, uh, but said, man, you got a great passage. It kind of looks like nothing’s happening, so I’m excited to see where you’re gonna go with this.

And I already knew that. It’s kind of like the flight gets canceled, the game is postponed, the appointment rescheduled. You watched all the available episodes. Now you just gotta wait. Right? These are the boring moments. Why in the world would Luke choose to have this recorded in scripture, these mundane events?

Better yet, why would the pastor choose to preach about this? Well, this pastor was assigned this date and this passage, and so that’s why we chose to preach about this. No, we really believe, and this is a core belief that we have here at Fellowship, is that every part of scripture teaches we’re not just gonna hunt and pack for good passages and rip things out, but the entire narrative of scripture teaches and has something to.

Dallas Willard says this, we must accept the circumstances we constantly find ourselves in. I’ll call them these mundane or waiting events. As the place of God’s kingdom and blessing, God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are. I’ll read that part again. God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are.

And if we faithless, discard situation after situation moment after moment as not being the right time, we will simply have no place to receive His kingdom into our life for those situations. And moments are our lives. And so as we come to this waiting passage this morning, this is how God is at work.

And so we will read and jump in. I’m gonna split it into three sections this morning. And, uh, as you know, you probably have an attached thing on the back of your bulletin. Don’t look there too late. You already did. Uh, we’ll get to that at the very end. Uh, but we will, uh, I know it’s there. Okay. The first part here, waiting and exegeting is really the first part.

Big words for you. Verse 16. We already read. Paul was waiting for them at Athens expectant waiting, not taking the day off. His eyes and his heart have been guided by the Holy Spirit through a number of laps around here, the mission of God as the theme of Paul’s life. And so there’s really no on and off moment.

It says if sometimes we can think waiting is this evil that we have to just kind of get through to the real main event. But have you considered waiting in the scriptures? Have you thought about the idea of waiting, the concept of waiting? It appears very early on. In just the second chapter of Genesis in the Bible, Adam was created, placed in the garden.

Genesis two 18. God said, it is not good. That man should be alone, so I’m going to make him a helper fit for him. And what happens next in Genesis two 19, God makes a zoo. The animal starts showing up, and Adam is going to name all of these animals. And so there’s this expectation of there’s no helper and millions of animals come through.

God populates the earth with these animals. Genesis two 20, we keep going. But among all of the animals, there was not a helper fit for him. Waiting, longing, expectation, and eventually Eve was created. They hadn’t even sinned yet. That’s in chapter three. Waiting is pre fall of mankind. Now, some of you were like at the stoplight waiting.

Now that’s sin right there. Like that is the worst, right? But no, it’s actually part of the Bible even before the fall of man. I wonder if, as we think about the idea of waiting this tension, the length between the need that we might have, or a perceived idea of our need and the answer of God is not intentional, an invitation for us to trust, to have faith in the middle of where we’re going back to verse 16 as he’s waiting for them in Athens, Paul’s spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

Paul arrived in Athens. It was the most educated city in the world. He was moved by the amount of idolatry he saw. The pagan writer Petronius said it was easier to find a God in Athens. Then it was a man. It was said that more than 30,000 public statues and and idols lined the streets protecting every archway and doorway, and aside from all the personal idols that you might have in your house, seems impossible to really overstate that idolatry was a thing in Athens and Paul’s spirit was provoked by that.

Now, why would this be? Well, we remember Paul was a Jew, right? He wasn’t a classic scholar like some of these Greek philosophers, but he knew the 10 Commandments and the first one. No other gods but me don’t create or serve any other god’s but me, for I am a jealous God. He remembers, he knows those words and his spirit is provoked inside of him as he sees these carved images all over the city of Athens.

This provoking, this idea is, is the Greek word prism, a sudden outburst of emotion. It just kind of, he violently like reacts to seeing all that he sees around him. And I wanna say that Paul was at this point probably engaging in something, whether he had the word for it then or not. Cultural exegesis.

He’s studying the culture, he’s looking around and he’s beginning to see what these uh, things are happening in this. Simply put cultural exegesis as being a student of the location that you are in. So you can culturally exegete the town of Mount Laurel and Collingswood. In fact, actually, when the Collingswood campus was, uh, in Haddenfield before it was intentionally chosen and they studied around that area.

And similar looking for a building in Collingswood, the very same way. What is the makeup of this town? What do people love? What do they fear? What do they value? And it might look different here in Mount Laurel than it does in Collingswood. It’s a principle that’s used often in cross-cultural mission work.

You know, you go to another country and you enter their culture. You don’t bring your culture and impress it upon this other people group. You join, you enter, you learn, and you come alongside of them to share. Jesus. Uh, rather than give you an example of, of this, I thought it would be best to, to highlight some of the people who’ve done this work, um, in incredible ways.

We have a, uh, a long list of missionaries here at Fellowship, and I wrote to them throughout this week and asked them, could you give me a story of either a cultural exegesis, blunder, or a way that God really used you as you were studying the culture that you were entering into? So, here are a couple of gathered stories.

Cultural exegesis is fun, it’s exciting and it’s humiliating. Here we go. Jacob Berlin and his family, he was here last summer, they are, uh, working with victims of sex trafficking in Bangladesh. He says, I once preached a sermon and concluded with, with this theological truth. Jesus is the potato of the world.

The word for potato is a lie, and the word for light is a hello. He got it wrong. Cultural exegesis. Jesus is not a potato. Similarly in the country of Bangladesh, it’s a great place to make some wonders. Sean and Harold Ebersol. Uh, when Sean was studying in language school, um, she was in a Rick Shaw, which is like a low budget taxi.

And, um, they were heading to the store and suddenly the Rick Shaw driver decided he was gonna take a turn, uh, off on a side road, and she meant to shout, go straight. Instead, she shouted, go cucumber. The man paused and gave her a strange look. Another time. She was excited to be given the opportunity to teach a, a bible study in Bangla.

She was learning the language and it was her first time to really open the scriptures in another language and begin to teach. After her very first Bible study, a a sweet lady approached her and said, you know what? I didn’t understand a word you said, but you have an incredible smile, the joy of the Lord.

And if you know Sean, the the joy of the Lord radiates through her. And so I bet she laughed and talked about the Lord. Even in ongoing there, I heard from a number of missionaries this week and each of them shared something about their funny stories, but also something of significance because cultural exegesis, as you, as you think about it, it’s allowing us to know God’s people better, which allows us to know God better.

That at times we learn the ways that he does and, and maybe works differently in other cultures. We listen for ways that he might speak uniquely here or there or or in that person’s location. And most importantly, we allow space for God to meet us in new ways. Deb and James Knight. You may know Deb as Deb Beru.

Uh, she got married and they, uh, Deb and James were missionaries in Nija, west Africa. She was an occupational therapist. And, uh, one of the things that she wrote here, I’m gonna read because Deb’s an incredible writer. I went through a period when I lost several pediatric patients and I was in a really dark place.

We had a kiddo come from the Boo Zoo people group, who was a slave tribe of the tox. She had a severe burn and came down with cerebral malaria. While she was going through the process of reconstructive surgeries. After this little girl died, her father a devout Muslim, thanked me a grieving father. In his words to me were, thank you.

In this place we see Jesus. His words angered me. Jesus could have protected her from malaria. Jesus could have provided them with the means to buy a mosquito net. Jesus could have, but he didn’t. I began having this recurring dream. She writes, this same little girl would come in my dream, standing there on her one leg and the other severely burned, tucked underneath of her, and then everything would go white, and she would suddenly be standing on two legs next to Jesus holding his hand, and he would speak to me, but I couldn’t hear him.

This went on every night for over a month. I was leaving the country of Nija for a week of rest, and on the plane somewhere over the Mediterranean, I had the dream again. Only this time I could hear Jesus speaking and he said, I didn’t do this. I allowed it, but I didn’t do it, and it breaks my heart more than yours.

I woke up with tears running down my cheeks in the words of her Muslim father in my ears. In this place, we see Jesus. It was at that moment that my theology of suffering changed, and I came to realize that the Holy Spirit was wandering the halls of our hospital. He was ministering to the hearts of the dying and revealing the truth of Jesus.

Without my words, it will only be in heaven that I may know how many people came to our hospital, not for the healing from disease, but to meet Jesus as they passed on from this life to the next. I am sure Paul was unsettled as he left his ministry. Buddies in Athens sent ahead. I’m sure the waiting felt pointless at times.

He’s human after all, and now to be dropped into a place saturated with idolatry. But God’s spirit is intentional, leading us to deeper understandings of our surroundings and himself. What’s happening in your waiting right now? What are you facing in this season that if you were in charge, you wouldn’t be facing?

Is there something you’re required to deal with that you’d rather not have to put your time to right now? Where have your plans dripped like, like sand through your fingertips? Where do you feel troubled or inadequate or weak or defeated? Alienated. Is your BLA brain flooded with events of the past or the regrets is the future causing anxiety?

We wait for the Lord. Why? Because he’s sovereign. He’s trustworthy. Psalm one 30 says, I wait for the Lord my whole being waits and in his word, I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than the watchmen. Wait for the morning more than the watchmen. Wait for the morning. Paul demonstrated this expectant waiting.

This, uh, not wasted time to study the culture that he was newly invested in. God’s spirit speaks now today in our waiting. Okay, number two, listening and engaging. Verse 17 in the book of Acts, chapter 17, guided by the spirit. Here’s what happens. Paul reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there as was the custom of Jesus.

Paul entered into the synagogue. It’s the religious center. It’s where all the people that he would’ve connections with. He, after all, was a Jew as well, and so he went right to the people who he might have the best chance at sharing this gospel with. He reasoned with them, spoke their language. The Greek word for this is Dimi, which is where we get the idea of dialogue.

It’s this back and forth conversation hoping to come to a resolution of the truth. He also engaged not just with people in the synagogues, but with people along the way in the marketplace, whoever happened to be there. The common folk. I love this way of ministry. We’re available. The walls are down. We’re just looking for a chat.

You think of ministry moments, even here at Fellowship, and maybe this is just an American thing, but we got a lot of great plans. Ministry starts at seven o’clock and it ends at nine o’clock here. Sometimes we reserve rooms here at the church to make sure that our meetings can be planned. We schedule things and we’re intentional.

These are all good things, but Brother Paul is out at the food store at the A Agora, which is less like Wegmans, probably more like the Collingswood Flea market, where there’s just people who are selling things all around and he’s looking for conversations. He’s talking to the, the shop owners and the sellers.

He’s the person that comes up to you in the, in the spice aisle, and he sees you with that ground mustard and he sneaks in a conversation about the kingdom of God somehow, some way. It just seems like that’s who he is. Some of you are just naturally gifted that way, and others of you have a different gifting where you’re like, the hat goes on, the ears come in and you’re like, Wegmans is solitude for me.

I don’t wanna talk to anybody. I don’t wanna see anybody. Just don’t talk to me. Different strokes for different folks. Paul was available to the spirits leading, even as he was just wandering around finding ground beef for a recipe and probably didn’t have ground beef. Okay, verse 18. Not only did he go to the synagogue intentionally to his people, and he was available as he was walking through the marketplace, but some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him.

And some said, what does this Babbler wish to say? Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. He made space for these philosophers, the epicurean people that thought everything happened by chance. Death was the end of it all. There’s no afterlife.

They believe Gods were removed from the world and they didn’t really care. Pleasure was the chief end of man and the stoics. Everything is a God. The Spirit turned God, uh, spirit turned back to God upon death, and everything that happens is the will of God and we’re to accept it without resentment. These are the two groups that labeled Paul a Babbler.

Baler is, uh, comes from the Greek word sperma logos, which literally means seed picker. If you think of a bird kind of bouncing around on the ground, picking up seeds and just gathering little pieces from other things, the message that Paul is preaching is almost like he was a bird that jumped around and then picked up some stoicism and picked up some of this and they couldn’t figure out how to peg him.

He’s just a babbler making this stuff up, but he’s not an epicurean. He’s not a stoic. He’s preaching something handpicked, maybe a far out god, a conglomerations of things or, or a divinity somewhere that we don’t understand, and he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. They didn’t have a framework for the resurrection.

In fact, all life ended at there was no afterlife for the epicures. The resurrection was confusing. New life in Christ was confusing to them. And so Paul preaches this truth and is misunderstood, and I wonder if we’ve ever been in a place before where as you’re sharing with people, they get this blank look on their face.

Like, what are you talking about? Jesus makes no sense to me and apart from the spirit’s work, they’re absolutely right. It makes no sense, but Paul is engaging and talking and speaking, and they push back on the truth. One. Peter three, he says it this way, always be prepared to have conversation to dialogue with gentleness and respect.

He’s not entering the synagogue’s truth, shaming them for getting it wrong. He’s not going to the marketplace with a bullhorn. He enters into conversations with known opponents, listening and engaging them. And he was misunderstood because freedom in Christ is terribly confusing. God’s grace and forgiveness seems impossible to grasp without the spirit.

It seems too good to be true. It doesn’t make sense. It’s scandalous that somebody would come and die in the place of undeserving sinners. And as Paul shared with these Greek philosophers and the Jews of his day, he shared boldly and would later record this in Romans one 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God and salvation for everyone who believes first to the Jew, into the synagogue, and then to the Gentile, the marketplace and beyond.

This is the power that he preaches.

Okay, let’s move on to the last section here. The trusting and responding of Paul. Verse 19. And they took him and brought him to the areopagus saying, may we know what this teaching is that you are presenting for. You bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.

Now all the Athenians and foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So because of these things Paul has brought into the Areopagus, remember Paul took the early boat from Berea. He’s in Athens now, and because of the Jews stirring up trouble from Fess Lanica, he moved on and he was dragged now into another section.

And I bet when his friends get there, they’re like, Paul, we sent you to not cause trouble. And here you are in the Areopagus. So much for passive waiting, Paul, right? And so where do they take him to this place? Uh, that comes from two Greek words. Areopagus Peus means big rock and Aries, the God, the Greek mythology war God.

And so it’s the, the God, the Rock of Aries, a place where people gathered. It was just below the Parthenon. It was a large pagan temple that kind of overlooked the, uh, the Areopagus. So it later be called Mars Hill under Roman rule. But as a place where many intellectuals came and debated and discussed theological issues, things of, of intellect, philosophy, religion, and all the various things that you could, uh, make about a God.

They talked about it there. And so Paul was brought into the council to give an account for this new teaching, which they didn’t have a framework for. This was a huge moment. So the quick retracing of it here, Paul left his friends because of opposition. Paul was dumped in Athens with more statues than.

Of Gods than humans. He waited and was poked and prodded for his teaching and eventually dragged into the cultural religious conversation. If you have ears to hear this here, can you bring back up the four goals of the Holy Spirit on the slides? The first one, to carry God’s gospel, the good news to all nations.

Check ongoing to sustain God’s people amidst every opposition. He’s doing more than sustaining Paul to fulfill God’s sovereign purposes. He’s invited to share at the gospel, at the very top of the top in this Greek culture. While he’s waiting for the moment. To unite God’s church, you better believe that what’s coming in a few weeks is he preaches through this sermon before the Areopagus, people would turn their hearts and know the living Christ.

If we keep in mind the incredible purposes of the Holy Spirit, incredible purposes of God, our theology of waiting begins to shift. That what God accomplishes on these rainy days or in this moment of, uh, seemingly mundane, is actually God speaking and moving with a guiding light. He’s not abandoned or sidelined us in these moments.

He’s not doing anything like that. He’s working on deep, many, many levels steeper than we can even imagine. In fact, if we knew all that, God knows, we wouldn’t be calling it a rainy day or mundane or waiting. We’d be calling it God’s sovereign plan. We’d fall in worship. Because we believe that God’s revelation includes more than just us.

It’s going deeper than simply just external actions that we might want to jump towards. He’s working beyond this very moment, and in spite of my blindness, if we only would just trust him, if we could only worship him. Now, in this moment of waiting, if we could proclaim his faithfulness in the middle, give us faith.

Lord, help us to have faith before we see. I want to close this morning with a final story from the mission field. Um, this one is, uh, one of how, one of our missionaries, again, Deb got onto the mission field in, uh, west Africa. Nier. This is her journey to Gamy Hospital. Um, again, she’s an occupational therapist and so was kind of looking for some opportunities.

She writes this, Well, I was preparing to go with Mercy ship to a prosthetics clinic in Liberia. I felt the Holy Spirit say, I have something else in mind. An old friend had been working with S I M Ni Nigeria and had asked me to consider coming to work in their hospital. So went to the website and the first position I found was for an occupational therapist at Gmy Hospital in Niger.

The spirit said, that’s the one I questioned. Where do you want me to go? I googled it. I saw that it was at the edge of the Sahara desert north of the middle of nowhere, and said, Nope. The next available spot was at a leprosy hospital also in Niger. Still a no from me. Nigeria fell through and s Im reached out to every field looking for a placement.

For me, the only bite was the leprosy hospital. So I begrudgingly agreed to go. I got rid of all my furniture, gave up the lease on my apartment, and the night before I was leaving to go to my training, I sat on my empty living room floor and read an email from the Mission. The leprosy hospital doesn’t need you.

After all, I looked up at the ceiling and shouted, Lord, what do you have up your sleeve? I reread the email. Nigeria doesn’t need an ot, but Gmy Hospital in Niger needs an ot and we would love for you to come here. Gmy Hospital, the Sahara Desert, right back at the beginning where the spirit had tried to send me months prior.

Fast forward a few years, occupational therapy in the desert. You can just imagine what that’s like. And a colleague was emptying out an old shipping container. Inside a, a crumbling box was a little spiral bound notebook labeled Gamy Hospital Physical Therapy. The first page read to the next physical therapist at Gamy Hospital.

That was me, the date at the top. April, 1981. I was born in April of 1981. When I finally opened my hands, I allowed him to move forward with what he’d been planning long since before I was born. Isn’t that the way the spirit works? That if in our waiting, if our pushing back on the way that he would lead us, would only be turned to faith in things that we don’t yet see?

We would see God work in incredible ways. Pray with me this morning,

Lord, you are working so far deeper. So far beyond what we can even understand or comprehend. And, and Lord, quite honestly, I’m thankful that you don’t tell us what’s ahead. Sometimes I’m thankful that we don’t know the end plans. We know that it’s your glory, but how we get there and the way your spirit leads, we just wanna walk with open hands.

And as we see Paul engaging even in the midst of what seems like a, a detour or a, a holding moment, you are at work Spirit. Lord, open our hearts to see, uh, as you see in these moments, to, to witness the way your spirit wants to meet. Philosophers at the Areopagus wants to meet people at the grocery store, Lord, and wants us to connect with brothers and sisters here in our own church building.

God, we ask that you would give us your vision. We pray these things in your name. Amen.