God Working in the "Margins"

(By Danielle Stewart - lead pastor Evergreen)

"Where are You working today, LORD?"

We often think that God is working in the margins (off to the side) when working in the margins is God's actual work. Our perception of things around us is not God's reality. God's reality is expansive and ever opening upon itself; His reality is limitless since He is limitless. He is omnipotent.

He is a master weaver, weaving this giant tapestry that we only see glimpses of in our humanity in our limited ability. On this side of heaven, we see these glimpses, but one day, face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). One day we will know as we are known by the Holy One, we will see the full picture, the tapestry. We will see Jesus face to face.

When God is working in someone's life, we are seeing a part of Jesus here on earth. That's why we are all composites in the One Body, One Church of Jesus Christ. This is why it is very important not to rush the work of the Holy Spirit, not to question how God is working or His timing but to recognize that Jesus is revealed in each and every work that He is doing in someone's life, and that is a sacred thing.

In the Book of Acts, we see an astounding display of the Holy Spirit's crisscrossing work all over Jerusalem pouring out into all the regions surrounding Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been ground zero for everything from Jesus' Passion to His Resurrection to the giving of the Holy Spirit and birth of the early church. But even Jesus had said that His followers would receive power from Heaven and then take this Gospel power not only to Jerusalem but to all Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

As we have been watching Jerusalem in the beginning of Acts and as we have been seeing Peter and John among others working for the Name of Christ, these individuals and this locale as the center of the narrative will begin to shift as the Holy Spirit highlights the margins. After we mourn the martyrdom of Stephen, we suddenly see how his death casts the net of persecution and power out to those exact regions where Jesus said His followers would be His witnesses. So as we continue to read Acts from Saul to Cornelius we begin to see the focus shift to what could feel like the margins in comparison to Jerusalem, but which is actually the very center of what God is doing! I referenced earlier that when God goes to work in the margins or what we might consider the margins that He's gone to do His actual work. Everywhere God is working is His central focus because He is just that Mighty!

In the margins, we find the story of Saul, a super zealous and very capable rising star within the influential religious group of the Pharisees going about terrorizing this new sect of the Jewish faith...those who follow Jesus as Messiah. He has this radical encounter with Jesus Himself and is never the same. He is healed of blindness, physically and spiritually and starts preaching Jesus in Damascus! Jesus tells Saul who becomes Paul at the outset that he will suffer for Him. The crucibles that form Paul spiritually are suffering, rejection, and at times isolation. He makes the Jewish community at Damascus so angry that they plant to kill him and he has to escape out of a hole in the wall.

Then when Saul goes to Jerusalem to find solace and protection, this happens: 'When Saul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to meet with the believers, but they were all afraid of him. They did not believe he had truly become a believer! Then Barnabas brought him to the apostles and told them how Saul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus and how the Lord had spoken to Saul. He also told them that Saul had preached boldly in the name of Jesus in Damascus. So Saul stayed with the apostles and went all around Jerusalem with them, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. He debated with some Greek-speaking Jews, but they tried to murder him. When the believers heard about this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus, his hometown. ' (Acts of the Apostles 9:26-30).

Saul to Paul, starts in the margins but comes into central focus as time goes on because everywhere God is working is His central focus!!

Then, as we get ready to read about Cornelius in Acts 10, (the margin story of all margin stories), we have Peter over in the towns of Lydda, Sharon and Joppa praying for Jesus to heal a lame man and a dead woman and He does! Jesus through Peter's faith heals Aeneas and Tabitha and the whole towns of Lydda and Sharon believe, whole towns, you read that right! And many in Joppa turn to the LORD as well after seeing Tabitha (a.k.a Dorcas) raised from the dead! Holy Spirit is everywhere, crisscrossing the region, touching people and setting them free through willing hands and feet of His followers, and next stop, the ends of the earth! You and me!

Next, we have Cornelius, the Roman officer who fears the God of the Jews and who prays and gives to the poor with such earnestness and regularity that those prayers and offerings rise up before God as a Memorial to Him! Wow, anyone need a motivation to pray? There it is, God takes notice of our prayers and of our actions that stream from a pure heart. Why is Cornelius' story the margin story of all margin stories? Because he is a Gentile (non Jewish person) and not just any Gentile, but a Roman one, and not just any Roman Gentile but one who serves in the Roman army. Cornelius is part of the occupying power of Rome that has been a catastrophe for Jerusalem and for the people of God, but here we have the Holy Spirit watching him and loving and caring for him because he has come to faith in the God of the Jews.

His heart is open and is ready to hear about the Messiah and an angel is sent out to the margin of Caesarea away from Jerusalem. This angel enters the home of a Gentile (something that Jews were not allowed to do by God's law) and gives him instructions. News flash, God's law is about to be amended. News flash number two, God's law is His law so He has the purview to amend it according to His perfect plan, and news flash number three He was making One New Man from Jesus: Believing Jew + Believing Gentile = God's People. God is also a master gardener who specializes in taking the perfect root with the original branches and can graft in a wild olive branch to then have one abundant olive tree (Romans 11)!

Please take a moment to read Acts Chapter 10 if you haven't recently to get the full force of the work of God in Cornelius' life, but to summarize we have this man and his household and friends gathered to hear the message that Peter comes to bring. When Peter begins to preach Jesus, the Name above all Names, and tells of His life, death, and resurrection for the salvation of humanity, before Peter can even finish, the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius and everyone gathered and they begin speaking in tongues and praising God! Their hearts believed even while Peter was speaking and they were born again (John 3)! And as the Holy Spirit stirred their hearts they were receptive to be fully marked by God and the Holy Spirit filled them! God has no margins; He has totality! What happens after that for Cornelius and his house? They get water baptized to honor Jesus and fulfill all righteousness!

When the Holy Spirit came on the scene, time sped up. This is what I mean, the amount of God's activity in the earth multiplied and increased exponentially, parallel God moments, intersecting God moments happening from that point on! Why? Because the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon believers put God's Omnipresence into action in a more visible way...suddenly, these "greater works" that Jesus prophesied were simultaneously happening! The Holy Spirit had come and had brought Christ's power to bear in every believer's life. And what else happened that day at Cornelius' house? New barriers were broken because salvation had now come to the Gentiles and it was about to spread like wildfire. One New Man (Ephesians 2:14-16)! The spiritual domino effect had started on that Day of Pentecost and we are evidence of that sitting here today, carriers of the DNA of the early church, holding to ancient Christianity in modern form!

Here is my question for us again: "Where are you working today, LORD?". And furthermore, 'what are the margins of my life, where is the Lord working in me today? where is he working around me? And finally where is He working in others around me?' Could I be a Peter to someone's Cornelius? Yes! Absolutely! Please Holy Spirit, find us faithful and available to go wherever hearts are open and waiting and poised to receive Jesus. Make us ready for encounters where You move in spite of us and then through us and out of our ordinary! Usually people were born again and then water baptized and then we see them receiving this unique other filling of the Holy Spirit after hands are laid on them in Acts, but here at Cornelius' house they are receiving the Holy Spirit and signifying their born again experience through water baptism after the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

Also, no one was laying hands on them when they received the Holy Spirit, Peter was simply speaking the Good News! Why all the detail on this part? Because we need to shake out of our linear understanding of the world around us and get in the Holy Spirit's classroom where He moves in response to the heart. He is not stiff or rigid, but rather as this master weaver of God's love for humanity, He is crisscrossing His love into every place, every person, from the upper echelons of society to the forgotten places of the earth...He is there. In every nook and cranny and every margin of our hearts! Let Him light you up! Come Holy Spirit, welcome Holy Spirit, we love you.

'“As I began to speak,” Peter continued, “the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as he fell on us at the beginning. Then I thought of the Lord’s words when he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ And since God gave these Gentiles the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to stand in God’s way?”

-Acts of the Apostles 11:15-17

August's Announcements & Calendar below:

• Men's Bible Study, still on summer break, plans to resume in September.

• Exciting Volunteer Campaign this month! This Sunday, August 6th, you will see amazingly large post it notes (lol) posted in different places all over the church space letting you know areas you can serve with the description and sign-ups available. Please take a moment to look around and find a place you are interesting in serving, we definitely need you on the team!!

• There will be training times for the new volunteer spots announced plus more work days to complete our nursery construction! Stay tuned for both of these important dates this month!

• We had a fantastic Ladies' Summer Brunch at the end of July and hope to do more ladies' fellowship events soon as well as some men's events! Great job Linda Oakley on hosting and sharing our devotion, it was such a blessing to us all!

• We now have an oven for the church, praise the LORD! Pastor Stewy has been scouring Facebook marketplace among other places and found a great deal last weekend, our community dinners that will enable further outreach are now in sight!! Praise God! Thank you Pastor Stewy for your hard work on that front.

• Tallahassee Run Crew is still in successful full swing, so if you want to join in, please reach out to Lauren Stewart for more details! It is a great way to meet some folks and get in exercise!

• Please join us in prayer for the Fall Alpha Group that Pastor Stewy is getting prepared to start...we are getting some further training for it in August, more details on that, but we really need you to pray and invite people to this group coming up in the fall. It is an ideal group for people who have zero faith or are skeptics who want to learn more about what Christianity is and finally it is a great group for believers who want to learn why we believe what we believe. This course will be separate from our Wednesday nights and very tailored as an outreach! Here is a link to more info about the Alpha course: https://alphausa.org/about/

• Last but not least, as we continue to get our rhythm as a church community, from time to time we will shift things to fit the community's needs and trends that we observe. With that said, we are moving the time for ALL Wednesday meetings both prayer and study to a start time of 6:30 PM. People are having a hard time making it to the 6 PM study times and we will have plenty of time to continue to share snacks etc. if we shift the meet time to 6:30 PM! And it will be a good thing to shift prayer back 30 minutes to 6:30 PM. One new time to remember: 6:30 Wednesdays, win, win!:)

AUGUST 2023 CALENDAR:

Sunday services begin every Sunday at 11:00 AM.

July 31st - August 5th:

• Wednesday, 8/2, NO MEETING, SABBATH WEEK, Join us back this Sunday, August 6th!!!

August 6th - 12th:

• Wednesday, 8/9, Discovery Group - 6:30 PM End Times Study (Bring a snack to share!)

August 13th - 19th:

• Wednesday, 8/16, Prayer - 6:30 PM

August 20th - 26th:

• Wednesday, 8/23, Discovery Group - 6:30 PM (Bring a snack to share!)

August 27th - September 2nd:

• Wednesday, 8/30, Prayer - 6:30 PM