The Need to Tell

03 30 07 The Need to Tell

"When they heard the boldness of Peter and John, and they discovered that they were uneducated and ordinary men,
they were amazed and recognized these men had been with Jesus."
(Acts 4:13)
When the Lord found me in 1993, he found a bull-headed, stubborn, aggressive, passionate, and commited man. I am so grateful for His mercy and grace, because only He knows where I was headed. Well the destination was hell, but I believe it was on a bullet! After having been used up and taken advantage of for the umteemth time, I had had enough and was ready to run and hide or just eat drink and be merry...and die!
I truly owe what life I have left to Christ! He took my stubborn aggressiveness and gave me the gift of evangelism to passionatley to places others wouldn't go to and to be committed to hang in when things seemed hopeless. He used my passion for children and families to teach them about His desires for each of us. He turned my attributes into His tools and my downfalls He interchanged with grace. He has used me and is using me as He sees fit, not according to what man thinks of me or who they knew me to be. I don't have to prove anything to God---He knows me from my head to my feet, inside and out!

In the Greek, uneducated and ordinary unlettered (agrammatos) and one's own (idiotes). We get the words unlearened and ignorant in English. It is beleived that the leaders listening to Peter and John and the others knew that they had not received a rabbinical education and therefore unlearned in Jewish schools. The apostles were thus private men, not officials or dignitaries. They were just ordinary men, "unschooled ordinary men" (NIV) or "uneducated annd unschooled men" (NASB).
There is indeed a place for us to study and show ourselves approved. However, God can use anyone who is committed to Him, who has a heart for God. Not all of the educated and schooled are even qualified! They are just that, educated and schooled, but no desire to serve God and people. For some theree is the need to tell, for others there is a need to sell. There is a difference!
"Whether it is right before God to obey you rather than God, you decide,
for it is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard."
(Acts 4:19-20).
Wherever we find ourselves in our relationship with the Lord, we need to tell others our story. We can't allow political correctness to keep us quiet. We can't allow our personal agenda overide God's agenda. We definitely cannot allow man to tell us not to do what God says to do! We can can never stop learning and we never stop sharing. We'll never know whom we can reach with our unschooled, ordinary, and common life. We all must give the Lord free reign in our lives and put off the shackles of man. What are we willing to do when the world says, "you can't!"