Doing the Unimaginable

"As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?" When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life." (Acts 11:15-18 NIV)

Have you ever thought of someone as beyond hope?  Your image of them is such you could never imagine them having a change of heart and coming to the Lord?  This is how the first Christians viewed the Gentiles, or non-Jews.  In their minds, they were beyond hope, and even if there were a few who converted to Judaism, they were second-class Jews. This helps explain the reaction the Jewish Christians had to Peter’s story of his visit to the house of Cornelius (Acts 10).  God had granted EVEN the Gentiles salvation!

God has a way of blowing away our pre-conceived ideas about people. No Christian in his right mind would have anticipated the Jewish zealot Paul going from persecutor to believer.  John Newton was a slave trader. No one could have imagined he would turn to the Lord and expose the change in his heart through the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”  C.S. Lewis was an atheist Oxford scholar whose conversion not only shocked his colleagues, but even himself, saying he was the most reluctant of converts.  And who could have imagined the hostile Auca Indians of South America, having killed four young Americans desiring to tell them the Gospel, would commit their lives to Jesus on the testimony of their widows? (See the story here.)  

Peter says God’s desire is for no one to perish into eternal death (II Peter 3:9).  Because of that desire, no one is beyond the hope of salvation regardless of how it might appear.  That includes the roommate who scoffs at your idiotic beliefs, the father who is abusive, the professor who is hostile, and anyone else you cannot imagine ever becoming a Christian.  EVEN they are not beyond embracing salvation from the Lord.

Today, don’t think anyone is beyond hope.  Pray for them.  Ask the Lord to open their hearts to Him.  He has been doing the unimaginable in people’s hearts for millennia and He is still doing it today.  

© Jim Musser 2013