Editor’s Note: The AMI QT Devotionals from March 7-13 are provided by Kate Moon. Kate has been serving the Lord in E. Asia for nearly 15 years.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
Acts 8:9-13; 18-24
Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention . . . . 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.
18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” 20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.” 24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”
What can we tell about someone who chooses sorcery as his occupation in life? At the very least, he isn’t normal. In Acts chapter 8, we see an interesting portrait of this funny, unusual man. He enjoyed the attention of people, boasted that he was someone great, but when someone greater came along, he fell into line and started following this person everywhere. His character seems almost recognizable, like the man in the movies who boasts in a bar of his arm-wrestling ability only to make a quick about-face when the real champion walks in. The comedy is in how shamelessly he humbles himself in the blink of an eye – a seeming defeat – but in that moment, if he does it charmingly enough, he wins over the heart of the audience.
Ego larger than life on the one hand, able to follow someone around like a devoted fan on the other, Simon could have been one such person. Despite all the outrageous things he says and does, we can still somehow see the humanity of the new believer and former sorcerer. Because of his newfound faith, he’d had to abandon the career which had been his whole identity and source of affirmation. As he tries to figure out a new life for himself, all he knows is that this ministry of the Holy Spirit attracts him; it seems similar to but at the same time so much better than what he’d been doing in the past. He had a heart that longed for more and the faith to believe in God for the extraordinary, but in seeking to gain some kind of access to all this himself, he goes about things in a clumsy way, offering money, and his request is denied.
Peter says that his heart wasn’t right before God, that it was full of bitterness and captive to sin. Was it out of bitterness that he had worked all his life in the past? A desire to make people recognize him born out of past experiences of their rejection or disrespect? If Simon wanted to engage in God’s work, he needed to have his heart renewed; he couldn’t bring the same heart he’d done sorcery and magic with before into the Holy Spirit ministry now. If he truly wanted to engage in this ministry, he needed to be operating from a deep love for people and a desire to see Jesus glorified, not himself.
It is admirable to seek the power of the Holy Spirit in ministry; it means we’re not content with life as usual when we know we serve an extraordinary God. As we seek God’s power, however, let us also pursue purity of heart.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, what is in my heart today? Do I desire people’s attention or affirmation? Am I motivated at all by any bitterness that I am nursing in my heart? Help me to lay all less than noble motives down. This day, as I seek Your power to serve Your people, would You purify my heart? For Your glory, in Your name I pray.
Bible Reading for Today: Revelation 21-22
I didn’t understand the hurry many Asian parents seemed to be in to get their children married off until someone explained to me that in this culture, parents don’t feel like their job is done until they see their children married and settled down. A majority of American parents may feel it their responsibility to get their children through high school at least; for Asian parents, getting their children married was the stage they were responsible for seeing through. Once they did, they could say, “It is finished,” (i.e., be “done” with parenting).
Have you ever found yourself angered by someone’s words or actions only to realize later that they were right and you were wrong? If so, consider yourself fortunate as it is better than being insensitive to the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the end.
In some ways, all of the Kung Fu Panda movies are about the lead character Po’s search for identity. In the first, we know from the moment he calls a goose “Dad” that he is going to have to deal with this question of where he “really” came from some day. In the second, he begins to have flashbacks of seeing his panda mother, and in the third, he meets his biological father for the first time, and the recognition is immediate. They have the same coloring, build and appetite, and as his panda dad takes him back to the village to meet more of his species, we can feel with Po his sense of wonder, happiness and joy at discovering there are others like him.
Sometimes when children of immigrants visit the countries their parents originally came from, it can be both exhilarating and traumatic. They often go to visit because they are looking for their roots, a sense of belonging, but sometimes they end up being rejected by the very people they are longing most to find connection with. When they walk into a store and can’t speak the language quite correctly, people wonder what is wrong with them. If they inadvertently say or do something rude, people assume it was intentional and react accordingly. Through such experiences, they discover things are more complicated than they’d imagined.
“Don’t you even have any eyes?” It was an immature response from an immature person (I was maybe around nine or ten), but it came from a very real sense of frustration at a perceived injustice. An adult had “accused” me of not closing the screen door properly when I came into the house, but I obviously had – if the person had any eyes, she could see for herself that it was closed. I knew I was being a little out of line, but I thought that maybe when she saw that she was the one in the wrong, she’d see my frustration was justified and let it pass, maybe even laugh. Unfortunately, some nuance was lost in translation in the bilingual household I was growing up in (apparently the adult heard the word for “eyes” as something more like “brains,” and apparently, in her culture, calling into question an adult’s possession of brains was a particularly disrespectful expression), and I got into huge trouble. It wasn’t about the door anymore but what I’d said to an adult, at which I felt even more frustrated, because I hadn’t said “brains,” I’d said “eyes.” It just ended up being a terrible, mixed-up, no good day.
Jesus’ call to love our enemies has largely been swept aside as a utopian fantasy that is unrealistic in the real world. I recently heard a joke that highlights this point. A pastor was preaching to his church about loving their enemies and he decided to take a quick survey of his congregation. He asked how many of them could count 10 or more enemies in their life. A few guilty hands went up. Then he asked how many of them had 5-10 enemies and a few more repentant hands went up. Then he asked who had at least one enemy and this time nearly all the hands were raised. Finally the preacher asked, “Who has no enemies?” After a moment, the pastor saw the hand of one elderly man being raised and, wanting the church to hear the counsel of this godly man, he asked, “What is your secret to having no enemies so late in life?” The man replied, “I thank God all those jerks have died!”
Before becoming a full-time pastor, I spent a number of years in the corporate world as a biochemist. I spent the bulk of my time working in two companies. One was a publicly traded company, which relied on secular investors; and the other, a private firm owned and operated by Christian businessmen. On the surface, you would think that the company run by Christian ownership would have a better atmosphere, culture, and work environment, and that they would treat their employees better than a company without any sort of Christian ethic. To my surprise, it was the non-Christian ownership that was better on most of these counts. Unfortunately, this is a trend that I see as I compare the majority of Christendom to the world. The world organizes better, sings better, motivates better, administrates better, builds better, and leads better. The main reason for this is the fact that the world doesn’t accept mediocrity, while the church—in the name of God’s grace—is perfectly fine with the mediocre. While I was working at my first company, one of my co-workers sent me a pretty funny email about laziness in the workplace:
In his farewell speech to the disciples, Jesus states clearly, “No servant is greater than his master and if they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” As we are faced with the suffering of Christ and the call to pick up our cross and follow Him, an important question arises: What does it mean for us, surrounded by all of this affluence and comfort, to suffer for the sake of the gospel?
As Christians, our courage was meant to come from our identity in Christ. So much of the timidity that we experience in life comes because we feel like we are not good enough. When we get a job that is well beyond our qualifications, we struggle with being unsure of ourselves. When we fall for someone who seems to be out of our league, we find ourselves stumbling over our words trying to communicate. In fact, whenever we are in the presence of people who seem smarter, richer, or more talented than we are, we feel our insecurities rising to the surface and all of our confidence leaking out. But when you truly come to believe in Christ, your sense of identity doesn’t come from yourself— it comes from the One who died for you. And when you begin to see the world from the perspective that everyone is a sinner in need of a Savior, a wonderful thing happens: you find yourself free from crippling self-consciousness.