It Seems Good...

Acts 15:22-29

I spoke with a colleague about something recently, something I was thinking of doing. "It seems good to the Holy Spirit and me that you do that," he said.
"You're kidding," I replied.
"No. Isn't that a great phrase? It's in the book of Acts. I just read it the other day."

It's from our story today, Acts 15. This point is early in the church's development and they had a lot of issues to sort out. There was a big question of whether you had to become a Jew before you could become a Christian; lots of Gentiles were starting to convert. The problem was to be a Jew the men had to be circumcised. It was kind of a problem for church growth.

So the disciples had a meeting and decided on the things they would require of new Christians: don't eat meat sacrificed to idols, don't eat/drink blood, don't fornicate. Good enough. They said, "It seems good to the Holy Spirit and us that we do this."

There is a preview of this sort of thing in John 14. Before Jesus died he said to his disciples he would send the spirit to help them interpret his words after he was gone.

My favorite part of Covenant Discipleship group is the spiritual promptings. We go through sharing our acts of compassion, justice, worship and devotion, and then share our spiritual promptings or warnings. We share how God has been working in our lives, how we feel led by God. We can all share guidance about our promptings also.

Spiritual promptings or warnings are what the rest of the world might call premonitions, intuition, coincidence, dreams. It's when you think of someone you haven't seen in years and then they call. It's sending a card and finding out someone really needed it. It's going this way instead of that way and running into someone you needed to talk to.

The other part of learning to listen to God's promptimgs is having a community to check them out with. We need to check out what we think God is saying to us with some trusted people.

I've been on the phone a lot this week with Ian's pastor getting ready for his memorial service. I called his cell phone Tuesday night -- he was in a meeting with my Dad. We talked about what we needed to and then he said, "Your Dad has an idea for the service. Would you talk to him?" He then handed Dad the cell phone. "Here Rusty; it's your daughter."

I said, "Hi Dad. How are you?"
"Well, I've been thinking about the service."
"Yes?"
"Well, you know Ian was a carpenter."
"Yes?"
"I think we should have a 21 nail-gun salute." Dad giggled.
"Uh...Dad, that's a really funny idea, but you know they usually shoot blanks at those salutes. I don't know how we'd do that with nailguns."
"Oh well. I thought it was funny."
I think Dad had been alone a bit too much that day. This is what it means to check things out with your community.

I had a conversation with someone after the service, a guy from my youth group. Our families used to camp together and we spent a lot of time together, and he hardly ever said more than ten words at a time to me. But yesterday he talked my ear off; it was wonderful.

He talked about waht it felt like to walk into the sanctuary again -- with the very tall blonde wood backlit cross up front. He spoke of what it was like to be with all the people from our youth group again, to be with the families we knew then, the Sunday School teachers coming up to say hello, all these people who cared about us and went to all our graduations and weddings. He said all these people were so important to him.

You see, we make promises here in church. We promise in baptism and in membership to listen to one another, to guide one another, to hlep hold one another's spiritual path and to hold one another accountable.

It seems good to the Holy Spirit and I...but check it out with your friends at church too. Amen.