“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,for whoever is not against us is for us.
Mark 9: 38 – 40
At work we now have various online e-learning which it is mandatory for us to complete. There have been some interesting topics as Climate Change, Equality and Diversity but I do not find the Health and Safety modules as engaging, and Risk Assessments will always worry me. Having read the information, watched the videos there is aways a quiz, mostly they are very straightforward but on occasions the answers are less obvious.
If you are anything like me, you will be pleased with a good outcome and a 100% score will give you that feeling of satisfaction. Just maybe there are occasions when as an individual or as a church we feel we have all the answers and only look for the Holy Spirit at work within the church, there may be a tendency to feel that we are the ones through whom God’s Spirit will work, and it is us who will hear the voice of God.
After all, we are the ones who attend church each week, we give money to the church and to good causes, we pray, we read our Bibles and we ask the Holy Spirit to move within us. Often the Spirit of God will work within His people guiding and directing them.
But like John whose words we read in Mark’s gospel asking about the one who was not one of the twelve but who drove out demons in Jesus’ name and the young church after the first Pentecost there might be occasions when we are unprepared to see God working in unexpected places. I love the story of Cornelius conversion because he is not part of the group, he is an outsider, a Gentile yet God spoke to him in a vision. Peter was not happy about being sent for to preach in the house of a Gentile, yet he remained faithful and preached to the household of Cornelius. And God poured out the Holy Spirit afterwards Peter explained his actions to the church ‘So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?’
At Pentecost we speak about the way that the Holy Spirit moves in unexpected ways blowing like a wind where it will, when I came across these plants which refused to grow in the box I thought immediately of the many ways and people that the Spirit of God uses, there is flourishing in unexpected places and God cannot be contained.
A prayer:
Holy Spirit of God we thank you that you speak in unexpected and unlooked for ways, through the kindness of strangers, in words, and music and visions, in healing and miracles. Open our eyes to see welcome and encourage new glimpses of the Kingdom wherever we encounter them.
Amen