[Jesus] said to them, “It is not for you to know times and epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

—Acts 1:7-8

Acts 1:8 is one of those verses I learned in Bible Drills, but never really looked into the context. There was still plenty of awesome truth to glean from the verse—a promise of the empowerment we need to make a difference for God’s kingdom, getting to see the fulfillment of that promise in the lives of the apostles just a few chapters later—but without looking at the verses before it, I had been missing a lot.

Acts 1 starts with Luke’s version of the Netflix episode recap, covering Jesus’ resurrection and appearance to His disciples. Then Luke tells us about one meeting in particular. Jesus had gotten the band back together. After being scattered at the crucifixion, they were all back under one roof, and their resurrected Rabbi was with them again. 

There are so many things the disciples could have asked Jesus, but the one question Luke records is a Grade-A head slap moment. After all of Jesus’ teaching, all the lessons and explanations, the one question the disciples ask is “So when are you gonna get rid of those Romans?”

During Jesus’ ministry, He regularly made it clear that He was not there to overthrow Rome. He told the religious leader to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. He told His followers to be kind and generous to Roman soldiers who demanded their service in some way. He healed the daughter of a Roman soldier and then praised his faith. He even submitted Himself to Romans to be crucified, but all the disciples could see was their struggle against Rome.

And it’s in the context of the disciples being frustrated about the Romans that Jesus tells them that their ministry will spread to every remote corner of the globe.

It’s another one of those passages that remind us how human the disciples were, how they were just as flawed as us because they could look the resurrected Messiah in the face and still be concerned about paying taxes to Rome, but there’s also something here that’s very encouraging.

It wasn’t too long ago that the disciples were in a boat when a storm rose up. They were so afraid they woke up Jesus and begged Him to save them. And Jesus responds by telling the storm to be quiet and telling them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” (Matthew 8:26)

Just like at the beginning of Acts, the disciples were focused on the struggle rather than the One Who was more powerful than that struggle. In Matthew, Jesus rebukes the disciples for not having enough faith and causes the storm to stop. In Acts, Jesus doesn’t stop the struggle but tells the men gathered around Him exactly how He will empower them to not only survive the struggle—which will get much harder by the end of their lives—but also to do things I can guarantee they never thought would be possible for them.

That’s such a beautiful gift. Sure, the struggles and storms are probably not going to be our cup of tea, but the way Jesus decided to empower His disciples was to give them the Holy Spirit. That means that even though God hasn’t decided to get rid of all our storms for us, He decided to do something better—He decided to go through the storms with us. He would be both our strength and our defender, and because He is with us, we can and will do marvelous things for His name’s sake.

The past few months have been a season of struggle for me. Between health and work and writing struggles, it’s seemed like one hit after another, so if you’re in the middle of a stormy season, I’m right there with you. My prayer for us this week is that we’ll remember Who is with us in our storms and all the amazing things He can do even if the sun’s not shining.