Thurs., 1/11/18 Devotion (Acts 11:18)

Today's encouragement comes from Acts 11:18, where we read these words:

"When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, 'Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.' "

The giving of the gospel to the Gentiles was such a dramatic event in re-demptive history that some people used to the Old Covenant way found it almost impossible to believe. But, once the ultimate Jew (Peter) told his fel-low-Jewish Christian churchmen what God had done among the Gentiles, the believing Jews also rejoiced.

Let us not be limiting the Lord's power to save in our own thinking. We may look at someone, or some group of people, and say, "God would never [or even could never] save them." The fact that many Gentiles entered the church in the first century is a great encouragement to us with regard to what the Lord can do among people today (in the twenty-first century).

[Puritan quote of the day: "All the heathen have had some religion, because they had some conscience to trouble them.” —Thomas Shepard, in, "The Sincere Convert"]