God may be bigger than you realise

 

This morning I walked through our estate and felt sorrow at the fact that I am not aware of many people here living in relationship with Jesus.  But it later struck me that maybe God is more at work behind the scenes than I realise.  Don’t assume that God is only at work in your small circle.  There are people that we have given up on that will yet come to faith.  We don’t know who is crying out to Him behind closed doors, and He is listening.  Even in churches where the gospel is no longer being preached, people may be to drawn to Him through the simple reading of His Word. 

A few years ago, I was out having coffee with Caroline.  I overheard these women talking about ‘the Lord’.  I went over and got talking to them.  It turns out that they were members of a charismatic prayer meeting associated with a local church.  They really loved Jesus.  Jesus is at work in this city.

When it comes to God working on this island, it is worth reading Saint Patrick’s autobiography.  His love for the people of this island reflects God’s love for this land.  As you may know, Patrick was brought here as a slave when he was still a teenager.  His parents were Christians, but like many teenagers, he does not seem to have embraced their faith.  Yet in his slavery he found freedom in Christ.  

Joseph Duffy points out that his faith gave him a deep inner peace and a sense of God’s love.  ‘His sense of God’s love for him was much more than the vivid imagination for his lost parents; it was a positive gift which reached mysteriously reached into his heart, a gift that he felt he in no way deserved.  He came to love God because he realised more and more how God first loved him.  The very thought of what God had done for him moves him to spontaneous and lyrical prayer.  More than once he remarks that he received this gift in the pain and loneliness of captivity in a foreign land’ (Duffy, 50).

It was a number of years after his return to Britain that God gave Patrick a vision.  In that vision a man called Victoricus was coming to him with countless letters.  Victoricus gave him a letter which began, ‘The Voice of the Irish’.  At the same time his mind was brought to the west coast, and the people were crying out, ‘we ask thee, boy, come and walk amongst us once more.’  That vision led Patrick to becoming one of the most famous missionaries in history.

The God who gave Patrick this vision to share the good news of Jesus with the people of this island, is a God who still cares for this land today.  Our media may treat Christianity as if it has died a fatal death, but Jesus will continue to build His church (Matthew 16:18).  Our God is not reluctant to save (Isaiah 59:1).  In fact, He privileges His people to be part of that work!