After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. Acts 15:7
…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14
My pastor, Don Guthrie, often reminds us that there are few (if any) promises in scripture for a people who do not pray. Prayer together is, quite simply, a critical and essential element for unity among any body of believers. Hopefully, if you are not new to my ministry, you have heard that before.
In the previous two posts in this series on “Finding Our Way Forward” through difficult issues, I wrote first about the power of multiple vantage points and then how important it is to make our words count, i.e., to avoid the kinds of comments and input which gets lumped into the “after some discussion” category in the minutes of the meeting. Now, we are ready to look more closely at the Jerusalem Council and observe exactly what types of testimony were actually worthy of being forever memorialized in the meeting minutes. Our take-away from these observations is simple: these are the types of comments we should strive for…these are the words which keep us focused on discerning the will of God on any given issue. We focus in this post on Peter.
Peter’s comments are obviously a reference to a previous story or testimony (“…you know that some time ago God made a choice…”). If you know Peter’s story in Acts 10-11, you know exactly to what Peter is referring here. His previous testimony was about an important word from God which he received in a vision, or a prayer state. He is reminding the Jerusalem Council of what God said to him then, in the midst of that prayer time on that rooftop in Joppa. The vision had to do with animals and “kosher” food, but the message behind the vision was about God’s change of plans concerning “His people”, and the events which immediately followed that vision had to do with taking the gospel to the Gentile home of Cornelius…something Peter might NEVER have done but for that vision. In his comments to the Council, Peter is simply reminding them all that God has already spoken (through Peter’s prayer time) on this issue of Jewish traditions and taking the gospel to the Gentiles. Peter is simply stating that what is happening among the Gentiles in Antioch is consistent with Peter’s own prayer time. This testimony, it seems, was important to this process of finding their way forward through a complicated and emotional issue.
The first type of testimony, then, which is helpful to our finding our way forward, is an honest and genuine assessment of what God seems to be saying to us during our prayer time. If Philip Yancey is right in his comment that prayer is “…a kind of vision correction so that I begin to see the world more as God does…” then it stands to reason that our testimonies about that very prayer are critical to any discernment of how God does in fact see a particular issue we may be facing. What is God saying to us through our prayer life? Could there be a more pertinent question to a church’s attempts to find our way forward through difficult waters?
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