Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Two thousand years have gone by since Paul proclaimed to the Jews that their Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Most stubbornly resisted and rejected the message, according to Luke in Acts.
If Paul was anything like we are in nature, he would have expected that the Jews most likely to listen favorably would be the "devout women," the ladies of the congregation who were always helping people with works of mercy. But imagine his surprise and disappointment when he found that among the members of the congregations most bitterly opposed to the Good News about their Messiah having already come were those same "devout and prominent women" (Acts 13:50).
There was no need any longer for those agonizing, all night prayer meetings where the people would cry out to the God of Abraham, "Please fulfill the promise made to our fathers, send us our Messiah!" Prayer for the coming of the Messiah had now become obsolete. Now it was time to thank God for already sending Him! In fact, such prayer now became a form of blasphemy because it expressed the sin of unbelief, the refusal to recognize that God had already performed what He had promised.
Today we may pray earnestly for God to send us the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the latter rain. Sometimes churches have held all night prayer meetings for that blessed gift. Could it be that, like the ancient Jews, we have neglected to receive the beginning of that same gift already given, and it went over our heads as the truth went over the heads of the ancient Jews?
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 14, 2005.
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