Anne Coxwell, my seventh-grade Sunday School teacher shook my hand in a receiving line at the front of the church, just before her family moved back to the United States. As I started to pull away, she said, “I will hear good things about you.” Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. To this day, I believe God was speaking his power into my life through the voice of this faithful servant of God. Every day I try to live into her benediction – her good word.
“You will be my witnesses,” Jesus said to the people in the upper room. Peter took those words to heart. Standing before a group of Gentiles, he told them what he had seen Jesus do. Then he shared the gospel: Christ was crucified, but God raised him from the dead. After Jesus rose from the dead, he commissioned these witnesses and commanded them to preach and to testify that Jesus will be the judge of the living and the dead. Peter finished strongly with this invitation, “Everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness through his name.”
People may say any number of things about us. Which ones come from God? What will we do about their words? Those early apostles testified powerfully to the good news of Jesus. Their message and ministry turned a broken world “right side up.” Our gospel still says, “We are worse off than we thought, and more loved than we ever dreamed.” We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. To this day when anyone believes in Jesus, they find forgiveness of sins. So many people need to be forgiven. We should definitely tell them. Some will believe.
