: Fear screams; faith whispers!

Imagine with me for just a moment; allow your thoughts to go to that person you’ve been hearing about who has been doing all kinds of wrong…in or out of the church. Do you have that person in mind?

Thanks for joining me for Coffee Hour with Chicklit Power and Wednesday’s Word with Trench Classes United. Grab your coffee and your Strand of Faith and let’s go tie some knots in our faith by applying a small portion of scripture to us.

So do you still have this person in mind? Keep them there as I recount the story of someone we don’t really hear about; he may even be a one-mention wonder in the Word, Ananias. In the book of Acts, which recounts the events that formed the first Christian church, we hear about this crazy man Saul who has been doing all sorts of bad things to the early Christians, including killing them. In this portion of scripture, Ananias was instructed by the Holy Spirit to go and lay hands on this guy! So not only was he told to go near him, but he was instructed to lay hands on him!

Have you ever been asked to do something that you were deathly afraid of doing? Well imagine that feeling times 10! But Ananias didn’t allow his fears to override his obedience. He went to Saul, did and said exactly as he had been inspired to do, and the Word tells us that “¹⁸immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once, and he arose and was baptized.”

Now we could literally stay in this verse feasting for a couple of hours, but let me just share with you three very powerful truths God spoke to my heart this morning as I was hanging out with Him in His love letters to me and you:
What if…I were asked to go and speak to and lay hands upon this one person who I feel has been tripping up the Christians around me? Would I allow my “righteous anger” to rip me off of the blessings that follow obedience?

And then in His loving and gentle way He reminded me of the calling He’s given me, to help remove the scales from people’s eyes through the organization He began almost 8 years ago!

But He didn’t stop there, because God is a God to all, but He reminded me that in some way specific to each one of us, we were all called to be an Ananias, to live a life that helps remove the scales from the eyes of those who have not seen, with their lives and hearts, the love of Jesus Christ!

Oh, Coffee Hour Friend, as we go about our day today, may we all be like Ananias, obedient to the whispers of our faith, living a life that helps remove the scales from the eyes of those who have yet to accept the reality of the necessity of the love and grace of Jesus!
Love,

Evinda