Putting Others Needs Over Your Needs

One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. (Acts 3:1-2) 
 
During Pentecost that is described in Acts chapter 2, something happened not just while a group of believers, the Church, was in the Upper Room, but when they left the building as well. There was a transmission of power, of grace, and of hope, and this transmission lifted someone, healed someone, and turned someone’s life around.  
 
The members of the Church became a beacon of light, life, and love to people struggling in a world filled with pain. People on the margins of society found a pathway to purpose and redemption. People whom others looked down upon, the Church welcomed in.  
 
Peter and John had just had the Holy Spirit come upon them in the Upper Room and were walking to the temple for a prayer service, when they came across a man who couldn’t walk. He was a lame beggar who, according to the text, was at the gate of the temple every single day. Many people would walk by him on a daily basis, ignoring him and his needs, but not John and Peter. They stopped what they were doing to help this man. They put their needs aside in order to help meet his, so that he might know the message of the Gospel and experience the power of the Holy Spirit just like they had.  
 
The Holy Spirit made them sensitive to the needs of others, and our prayer should be that the Spirit does the same thing for us. May we be less self-focused, and more others-focused. May we pay attention to the needs people have around us, and may we take advantage of opportunities we have to help those in need, so that we might show them the light of Christ, just like Peter and John did.