Reflecting on Acts 3:11-26“When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” (Acts 3:26)
When we think of blessing, we think of the gifts God has given us.
Family, health, financial success, a safe place to live… ‘I am so blessed’.
Peter refers to how God called Abraham’s family to bless all people (Genesis 12:1-3).
But then he explains what that blessing means, and it is not the above ‘blessings’.
“To bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”
Sin is to act in an unloving way, the opposite of God’s command to love.
Life in this world is misery because people to not love as God intended.
Collectively we are selfish, greedy, cruel, judgmental, unfair and uncaring.
And I can sense these traits in myself as well, how sin affects me.
Our world is filled with ‘wicked ways’, and I am part of this in my own way.
God sends Jesus to show us the blessed life; God raises Jesus to restore the blessed life.
The life of blessing according to Jesus is the life of loving and blessing others.
If everyone lived this way, our world would not be a mess, but a joy for all.
Jesus is still turning us towards the way of love and blessing.
To follow Jesus is to daily turn towards loving words and actions – blessed to be a blessing!
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, we are not here to enforce goodness by controlling other peoples' morality. We are not meant to be morality police, but a people who bless others with radical gracious love. Help me to bless others like You blessed me... with patience, compassion, generosity and love.
To be a follower of Jesus means to become more and more like Him, practicing the way. The way of truth and love. That means I need to b an instrument of His peace.
Verse 1:
Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred let me bring your love
Where there is injury your pardon, Lord,
And where there’s doubt, true faith in you
Verse 2:
Make me a channel of your peace
Where there’s despair in life let me bring hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there’s sadness ever joy
Chorus:
Oh, Master, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved, as to love with all my soul
Verse 3:
Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving of ourselves that we receive
And in dying that we’re born to eternal life