Now That I Believe, What Does God Actually Want From Me?
By Angela D. Thomas, DrPH, MPH, MBA
He wants you to go be a witness. Everything Jesus did across those forty days, revealing Himself again and again, was so that ordinary people would believe and then go tell it. You were not saved just to sit. You were saved to carry the news that He is alive.
We have walked all week through the awesome reveal. We got you up off the grave of the past. We sent you out to plant a seed while afraid. We found God walking beside you when you could not feel Him. And we learned to look for His hand on purpose. So let's finish right where the whole thing was always heading. Now that you can see Him, He has something for you to do.
Why Did Jesus Spend Forty Days Revealing Himself?
Not just to comfort a few sad disciples. He was building witnesses. Acts 1:3 (NKJV) says He "presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days." Person after person, appearance after appearance, He kept proving He was alive. Why work that hard? Because our entire faith hinges on the resurrection, and He needed people who could stand up and say, I saw Him, I know He is alive, and I will go tell it.
He said it to them outright. Luke 24:48-49 (NKJV) says, "And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high." You are witnesses. That is the assignment. And notice He did not send them out empty handed. He told them to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit first. That matters, because a lot of us are out here trying to do a Holy Spirit job on our own little bit of strength, and then wondering why we are so tired. He never asks you to do the work running on empty. He fills you first, then He sends you.
A witness is not a lawyer and it is not a salesman. A witness just tells what they saw. You do not have to have all the answers, you do not have to win the debate, and you do not have to have your whole life perfectly together. You just have to be able to say, here is what He did for me. That is the whole job. The woman at the tomb did not have a theology degree. She just had a testimony and some obedience, and God used it to move the entire world.
What Does It Look Like to Be a Witness?
It looks like the whole chain we watched this week. The women told the disciples. The two from Emmaus ran back and told the eleven. Peter ran to see for himself. Every single person who saw Him became somebody who told it. Nobody kept the reveal to themselves.
And that is the point of your reveal too. When God gets you unstuck, that testimony is not just for you. When He plants a seed through you, it is for somebody else's harvest. When He shows you His hand in the doctor's office, that becomes a story somebody else desperately needs to hear. You are not the final destination of what God shows you. You are the delivery person. He reveals Himself to you so you can go and make Him known to somebody who has not met Him yet.
So think about everything He walked you through this week. He does not do all of that just so you can feel better on a Sunday and go right back to keeping it to yourself. Every bit of the reveal has your name on the front and somebody else's name on the back. There is a woman in your world, sitting at her own Friday tomb, scared, unable to feel God, staring at a hard thing and missing His hand in it, and she is waiting on somebody to come tell her the tomb is empty. You are the somebody. That is what this was all for.
Belief Turns Into Worship, and Worship Turns Into Work
So watch what finally happened to those disciples. They believed. And after Jesus blessed them, Luke 24:52-53 (NKJV) says, "And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God." Their belief turned into worship, and their worship turned them into people on assignment.
That is the arc for you too. See Him, believe Him, worship Him, then go tell it. He was patient enough to reveal Himself to you over and over, in your fear, in your grief, and in your doubt, and He did not do all of that for you to keep it to yourself. A whole world full of people is still waiting to find out the tomb is empty, and He has chosen to let them hear it from you.
Take this to the Word yourself. Luke 24:44-53, Acts 1:1-8.
What This Means for You
Who is the one person in your life that God has been revealing Himself to you so that you could go and tell?
This is the final post in the Awesome Reveal series. Here's the whole week if you want to walk back through it:
Friday: Now That I Believe, What Does God Actually Want From Me?
I teach God's Word weekly inside the SheShed Community, and this is exactly the kind of teaching that hits different when you're in the room for it. The replay of this teaching, “The Awesome Reveal,” is available inside the community as well. Come sit with us.
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