If we waited for the Spirit today as the disciples did, would the tongues we speak in make us more relevant and understandable to our community? Surely as we learn to wait on God in preparation for being his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, this is what we should be asking God to do for us, that we would be understandable.
If the church calls us into service through the guidance of the spirit and by the authority of God then we are not called to volunteer (A volunteer is someone who gives themselves to something without expectation, it is voluntary, our choice.) If the church has the authority of God and acts under the guidance of the Spirit, then we are not being asked to volunteer but commanded to serve
Instead of worrying about what tomorrow will bring or what the future will be, what the church will look like, or when Christ will return, we have been charged with witnessing to the goodness and the gospel of Jesus Christ. That witnessing begins here in these pews, our Jerusalem. We are to remind one another, teach one another, point one another to Jesus, the cross. We are to remind one another that our hope not just for the future, but for today lies in Christ alone.
The sufficiency of God’s grace that comes with our unanswered prayers is the way in which our situations, grief, illness, limited capacity of any kind – the unlikeness of the role that has been thrust upon us, or the feeling of being out of our depth in the situation we find ourselves. The sufficiency of God’s grace is that he enables the gospel to be preached, talked about despite who we are or what we are.
https://youtu.be/tRzHxZi57eQ https://safefamilies.uk/over-a-year-in-in-northern-ireland/