Inclusive Discipleship (Acts 10:1-48)

Inclusive Discipleship
by Lisa Coleman

In One Church from the Fence, Wes Seelinger writes: “I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room…watching with anguished people…listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?

“The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. A person is a father first, a black man second. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.

“In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor’s next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.” Long before we’re in the intensive care waiting room maybe we can learn to live like that.

I think about all the unfairness, the imbalance or more simply put, the favoritism played out in the world. Sadly, it isn’t just out there in the world. It is in our very lives from the beginning.  Unfairness in families. Amongst siblings. In school. At work. In marriage. We spend endless amounts of time counting the slights. The disadvantages. The favoritism denied us. It is real and it does happen far more frequently than not. This world is not fair.

Perspective is a funny thing. It can jar our thinking, pry our clenched hands from our damaged viewpoints and set us on a course towards a freedom we never knew we could have or needed. Leveling life experiences, as dreaded as they are, can teach us so much if we are willing to see. The illustration above took my breath away. Tragedy is the great equalizer. Death is no respecter of persons, right? It is in this life experience we can see our commonality. No favored ones in this place. It is in this place we can know we are all on the same playing field. But look at the tragedy and heartbreak it takes to get us to see it.

Certain situations or life events round us all up in a tidy blanket of togetherness. All pulling together for a common need. An agreed upon outcome. And we can find ourselves in this new group in the blink of an eye. It can be a diagnosis, an accident, a death or even a pandemic. And through that lens, we can finally see. We are all human. With a common need. Love. Rescue. And certain lenses allow us to see more clearly.

This week, we are going to learn about the lens Peter is shown to peer through and the broader provision God planned for those who believe in Him. Join us!

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If you cannot be with us in person, feel free to download the Bible study materials for your personal use by following one of these links: PowerPoint SlidesPDF File. You can also find the video of this session on our YouTube channel soon after the meeting concludes. And lastly, you could follow this link to download other studies in this series: INpowered Discipleship if you happened to miss one of our prior studies.

Yours in Christ,

Eric Glover   
The Gospels Class     
Brentwood Baptist Church