June 20 – Acts 10:9-33

June 20 – Acts 10:9-33

Dear Father, we come before You in praise and with thanksgiving for You give us our ‘But God’ moments. You orchestrate our lives for Your glory. May we in our quiet time recognize You for who You are: our Lord God, the God of Israel.

First, do your own quiet time and 4R journaling.  When you are completed, come back here for the lesson.

Request Gods’ help

Read  Acts 10:9-33

Record a verse that stands out to you

Respond to God

But God has shown me

Wow, wow, wow!!!  What a chapter!  So full of hope!! Did anyone else get all jazzed and pumped up?  Salvation!  It’s what we Gentiles had been waiting for! No more separation as we had known it.  We Gentiles are no longer “common or unclean”, meaning we can have salvation, too!  The good news of Jesus is no longer just for the Jewish people, He chose us, too!!

But let’s settle down a bit and get to the God moment for Peter.

Let’s go back to the Old Testament for a moment to Leviticus.  God set the Israelites  apart in pretty drastic ways and one way He did that was to restrict their diet. Meaning, there was food that God deemed unclean, therefore the Israelites couldn’t eat it.  Peter being a strong, faithful, and obedient Jew, as well as a devoted Jesus follower would have followed this rule so strongly that it would have been done without question or thought.  So, take that nugget with you as we move to Peter’s vision told in today’s reading.

Peter, who historically was a person who needed three times the telling, was shown three times that the dietary restriction had been lifted.  Then, to top it all off God provided a real life applicable moment to practice what he was shown and to reinforce that the vision had in fact come from God. Because Peter is Peter, his But God moment was repeated, and repeated again.  Oh Peter!  It would not have been enough for God to send Peter a letter or have written it in the sky.  He had to send a vision, repeat it three times and theeennn give him an applicable moment to put it into action.  And then… he got to share the good news of Jesus because of it!

Look at all those But God moments in this chapter!  There are so many evidences of God here. Even the Centurian had a moment here!  Did you see?  He too had a vision and that vision came to fruition with Peter. Oh, what a God!

How did Peter get there to this moment?  He went to a quiet place and prayed.  So, his heart was prepped and in receiving mode.  Did God reveal it to Him right then?  Nope.  God knew Peter would need some practical and obvious evidence, so God waited until Peter was hungry and the meal was being prepped.    How neat.  God chose a moment relative to Peter’s real life to connect the dots to his spiritual life.  Could God have shown him right away on the roof top? Oh ya.  But He chose to wait until Peter was hungry and had a need that needed to be filled. Once God’s truth was revealed, and He told Peter to go, did Peter hesitate?  No!  He just went!

When God shows us something, sometimes it’s just for ourselves.  But sometimes, He assigns actions to the revelation that requires us to act, because God is about to do something really big.  And for Peter it was just that!  When you have a moment finish reading chapter 10 to see what God does through Peter. It was, is, amazing!!!!!

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Romans 8:28

(Further Reading: Leviticus 11:25-26; Mark 7:19; Ephesians 2.14)

Dear Lord, we praise You for You are a good, good God.  We thank You for meeting us where we are at and knowing us so well!

What’s next?

As the Spirit leads, in the comment section below, share what He has laid on your heart.

Then join us again tomorrow for the next commentary.

My Verse: Acts 10:28, “And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”