Opportunities, make the most of them

By John Jordan

I don’t like to preach sermons, but if I had to preach one right now, it would probably be on Acts 3. It’s the passage where Peter and John are on their way to church and they heal the lame man. Then Peter preaches to all the people who see the lame man dancing. There’s an interesting verse right after the lame man is healed. All these people have taken notice and realize that this former lame man is now jumping up and down praising God. It says: “Peter saw his opportunity and addressed the crowd.” Now this kinda seems cool to me, because just the other night I was reading in Colossians 4 and it says that we should pray for God to open a door for our message and that we are to make the most of every opportunity to share with unbelievers. So these two passages struck a chord with me because of what we are doing in Aliquippa. We are here to further the Kingdom of God and a big part of that is telling people about Jesus. Peter and Paul were definitely pretty good at that. So I figured I could learn a lesson from them. There are a few things I take away from the story in Acts and the verses in Colossians. First, we have to be walking in the Spirit to see these opportunities coming. I believe there are plenty of opportunities that we miss because we are not living in the Spirit. Second, we need to pray for doors to open for us to share our message. That has to be one of our main prayers as we are in ministry here. We don’t open those doors, God does. Third, while God does open the doors, it doesn’t mean that we have no responsibility at all. We have to be engaging unbelievers. We can’t live isolated from the world, that’s simple, but how easy is it to stay in our comfortable places away from the world. Peter and John could have passed by the lame man and said that going to church was more important. But it wasn’t, and because it wasn’t God created an opportunity for his message to be spoken. It’s a simple lesson, I am not real theological, but I think the Bible is supposed to be simple. I mean we’re sheep right, we’re pretty stupid.

So, opportunities. That’s what we are looking for in Aliquippa, and when we have them, we are told to make the most of them. When Peter saw his opportunity, he preached about Jesus and it says that a lot of people believed. He was also thrown into prison, but that’s a whole other sermon.

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