Underestimating people

"All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, "Isn't this Joseph's son, the one we've known since he was a youngster?"" Luke 4:22

In the 'olden days' we used to regularly have visits from the band or choir of other Salvo churches. Quite often these were powerful weekends when people shared and God moved in the lives of the locals. I have often pondered on why there seemed to be a very strong presence of God when a group was visiting but not necessarily so when it was just a normal Preston meeting.

Luke 4:14 says that "Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit". Yet, even with that power he couldn't seem to achieve much in his home town and was, in fact, run out of town.

The people there knew Jesus. They knew who he was and knew his background. Full of the Spirit he might have been but the locals couldn't see past who he was - the local kid from Nazareth. And so it was, I suspect, with visitors from other Salvo churches compared to our own people. When we don't know their past, all their faults and meltdowns, we can accept what God does through them. But when we know the past we can't see past their failings and so are unwilling or unable to accept that they might be 'powerful in the Spirit' and that God wants to work through them.

Maybe there are no real big black marks against them but if we have seen them grow up it's sometimes hard to accept that they might be, to use a Bruce McAvaney term, 'special'.

When I look at the people I see every week, and in many cases have known for many years, I have to remember that God can, and does, work through them. Ordinary, failed people they may be but I should never understimate God's ability to work through them.