Thought of the Day !!

Part 1 of 3 - What to witness to

So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and the the ends of the earth.
Acts 1:6-8

Throughout Jesus' ministry there seemed to continually be a gap in communication as to the real reason he was there. The followers understood that he was there to build up the Kingdom of God. But the problem came with their definition of this Kingdom.

In verse 6 the disciples ask the question, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" They were just like any other good Jew who saw himself or herself as one of God's chosen ones, and as William Barclay puts it, ones who were "destined for special privilege and world-wide dominion." They knew that as God's chosen ones they had at times been punished, but the promise of God to them was still there. And so they wondered when the kingdom would be restored to Israel when they would take back power. They saw the Kingdom in political terms.

But how did Jesus see this same Kingdom? Barclay suggests that we look at the Lord's Prayer where we pray every week "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven." The Hebraic way of saying things with emphasis was to use parallelism, or to say the same thing twice using different words, the second one amplifying or defining the first.

So we see that when Jesus was talking about witnessing, he was talking about being witnesses to a Kingdom where God's will be done. In other words, a Kingdom founded on LOVE.Not POWER. And this is the same Kingdom that we are to be witnesses to today.

In the love of Christ,
greg