By Michael A. Milton
When I lost my aunt who raised me I was journeying. But the journey had taken its toll. I felt that I was an orphan again. It hit me hard. My wife, who is my Luke, my companion, was there with me. But I thank God for people like my friend Jimmy Dodd, a busy church planter and pastor from another part of Kansas City, who took time out of his schedule to come to me and sit for a while with me. And I will always be moved when I think of Reverend Larry Lunceford, a retired missionary from Korea, who was at the time the Stated Clerk of my presbytery, who came to our home, walked through the door and knelt down where I was sitting. He embraced me, laid his head on my chest and wept. There were no words, but his ministry of presence brought tremendous healing and reminded me that Christ was there with me.
We must be the Church who meets people at their need, not only at their need in times of sorrow but in times when people are just moving in or going through another change in their lives. We must become a people who care enough to journey out of our comfort zones, to travel where we may not have been before and extend a welcome in Jesus' name.
The thing is: we never know when we are the ones on the road and need someone to go the distance to meet us.
Let us finally see from the last part of
verse 15 that ...
The Church Should Be A Place that Is a Source of Thanksgiving And Praise"When Paul saw them, he thanked God and took courage." Again, Dr. Luke and the Lord who inspired this text want us to see the power of Christians who go the distance to welcome others on their journey. The effort of those Roman Christians actually created the worship of God and the advance of the Gospel. For it says here that Paul thanked God, and the force of the sentence structure is that Paul "thanked God" for those believers who came out to meet them and that Paul "took courage."
In this sense we might say that sincere Christian love is evangelistic: it creates worship and praise; it produces strength to go on. In the very cases I mentioned in my own life, the ministry to me that took place some five years ago continues to produce praise and gratitude to God and gives me courage to carry on as a believer. Your ministry to another person is not just an act of kindness; it is a ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus said: "For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward" (
Mk. 9:41).
I have known Christians who wondered what their spiritual gift was. But there is not one Christian who can't do what these Roman Christians did in
Acts 28:15 - go out and meet another person. What resulted in Paul being blessed and God being praised began with just someone going out of his way to honor another. That is a gift. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that "So long as we love we serve. No man is useless while he is a friend." And that is Biblical truth. God is praised and believers built up when you befriend another person.
