The God StorySample

Crossing the Threshold

Father God, what I know of You will only ever be a fraction of who You are. Jesus, open my mind to see You and understand the Scriptures. Spirit, move my heart from familiar to fascinated until it is ablaze with Your unfailing love.

Read: Psalm 139:13-14

Today I’m reflecting on the movement of the Spirit causing the Church to expand from its Jerusalem-based Jewish beginnings into Judea and Samaria. A Gentile soldier named Cornelius caught God’s attention and attracted His favour. Simultaneously, the God of unfailing love prepared the Apostle Peter to meet Cornelius through a vision of food he would never have dared to eat…

Read: Acts 10:23-44

‘A revolution had come down from heaven… the boundaries of clean and unclean were being completely redrawn. The distinctions of purity that Peter had previously understood were now being expanded to include not just new food but new people. The table had just got bigger. Much bigger. A new world was being imagined and God had spoken a new word, definitively, to declare it so.’*

Peter courageously stepped across the threshold of Cornelius’ home, beyond his prejudice and ethnic pride, and opened a door to the gentile world that has never been closed.

Is there a people or culture that I do not love and welcome as Jesus does?

Father, form in my heart the very love You have for them. Empty me of prejudice, implicit bias, and pride.

Pause and pray

Father, bring to mind a people group in my city or nation that I often overlook or look down on.

I ask that they would flourish in Your blessing and that You would cause me to learn more of who You are through them.

Pause and pray

Peter lifts the prostrate soldier to his feet saying to him, ‘Stand up; I too am a man.’

I am moved by the growth in Peter’s humility through Jesus’ transforming work. A humility connected to an awareness of Jesus’ humanity and weakness.

Do I allow myself to be as human as Jesus was? Do I embrace my humanity or subtly reject it?

Jesus, You have brought dignity to being fully human and have redeemed my humanity. I yield to the reality, weakness, and glory of being a human. Forgive me for where I try to bypass my limits, hide my weakness, bury my emotions, and pretend I am more or less than a human.

Amen.

* Adam Cox and Alain Emerson, The God Story (London: SPCK, 2024), p. 187.