For His Glory: November 2013

We have been studying Acts and the light bulb went on as our week ended with our assigned biblical text exposition, which for me was the last 8 verses of Acts. Do you know what the last two words of Acts are? Without hindrance. That may not seem crazy to you or me but look at the context. Paul the great Apostle is in jail, under house arrest. The writer, Luke, ends the book with "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance." Acts 28:31. How can Luke end the book that way? Paul WAS hindered! Imprisonment and house arrest is a big hindrance in my book. This would ring in the mind of the reader. But...

Luke was writing to Theophilus and the church. The beginning of Acts opens with the "all that Jesus began to do and teach" and a promise that the few remaining disciples will be witnesses to the ends of the earth. This seems like an absurd impossibility at the beginning of Acts. But over and over again in Acts, God is advancing His kingdom through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. We see that they preached, taught, repented, believed, and the Lord added to their number, 2,000, 5,000, many, and so on. In the midst of all of this, there is a constant theme of persecution. But this persecution is used by God to spread the good news of Jesus to the known world. So yes, we see Luke is encouraging the church that is facing persecution that this gospel will advance.

It will also advance by the work of Jesus, not by any person. Paul, by the time Acts was written, may have been dead. This would have been alarming to the early Christians and make them question what will happen next. Luke is forceful with these words of "without hindrance" because he is showing God working all through Acts to expand His kingdom from the disciples to many churches all over the Roman empire (see the major markers in Acts 6:7, 9:31, 12:24, 16:5, and 19:20). But Luke wanted to make very plain that it isn't by one gifted person that this good news will spread and people will be saved. That is clear with Paul's imprisonment The point is that Jesus is continuing the work He began to do through the body of believers in the Church. This should be SO ENCOURAGING to us! It isn't about me doing everything right. It isn't about everything going according to my plan (which seems impossible in Mexico). It doesn't mean that there will be no opposition to this work. Most of all it isn't based on me at all, but on Jesus and His work. We get to be little fingers doing His work and we stand amazed at what He does despite our huge weaknesses.

So when I feel so incompetent, when I am bombarded with the things of this life and feel that there is no way this gospel work can be accomplished when there is so much life going on, I can take encouragement that Jesus is working to accomplish His purposes. What a joy to know we all can be missional wherever we are, in our weaknesses, and the kingdom of God will advance without hindrance!

DAN'S TRIP TO MEXICO - By Dan McKenzie

This week I was able to go to Mexico with my dad. I was expecting heat, but it was cold, it went down to 53 degrees at 8 am!

The dirt road was full of holes. The first day wasn’t too cold though, that day we went to “R” and “A” ‘s house for dinner,

Dan, R, and Dale

We were so excited to have warm drinks!

since I live way up north I had no idea what a Mexican taco tastes like until now, and I would say they are really good! I have never tasted such good fish!!!! And their enchiladas are amazing! What’s really strange is that when we are eating at someone’s house the people who live there won’t eat with us, they would rather eat after. But at “R” and “A”’s house they will eat with us. After dinner we had a bible study with “R” and “A”.

After one of the bible studies with R and family.

The next day we went to people’s houses and asked them if they want to come to a bible study the next day. One person had a pet wild hog!

Feeding a wild hog

Still hungry

Most of the houses had chickens and a dog or a cat, many houses had shells, crab pinchers, or fish scales strewn about from fishing, some of those shells were really cool! One thing I like about going to people’s houses in Mexico is speaking Spanish to people, I don’t know very much Spanish, but I know a bit. My favorite Spanish word is “frio”, which means, “cold. Josiah and Elijah Lynam came on the trip with their dad too. Josiah loved the hammock that was outside. That night we played some card games called “Uno” and “Monopoly deal”.

Late-night game of hangman

The next day we did the bible study, Mr. Lynam told a bible story to the people. After that we went to some people’s house and ate dinner there, after dinner Josiah and I played a marble game with some Mexican boys, It is really hard to learn a marble game if the people who are teaching you can only speak Spanish and say “one, two, three and four” in English. So after that we went back to our house and went to sleep. In the morning we drove home to Los Fresnos. I really enjoyed going to Mexico and I would like to do it again!