God's Promise to you 2,000 years ago- Acts 2:38-39

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Yesterday, the sermon was about our faith. Ed posed the question of whether we felt like our faith would be increased if we could just see some of the miracles that they saw in the first century. We get frustrated sometimes when we read the book of Acts, don't we? We long for the excitement and the wonder that seems to have pervaded the church. We sometimes wish the Spirit still fell on us the same way it fell on them. In ways that no one could deny.

Wouldn't you love to have seen the tongues of fire and heard the languages spoken at Pentecost? Wouldn't you thrill to see the lame man jumping for joy after Peter healed him? Wouldn't you live with more purpose and direction if you heard the voice of the Spirit the way it seems Paul did when Luke records Paul's travels and where he was led and not led by the Spirit?

And yet, here at the very beginning of the church...the very first invitation that was extended after Jesus ascended to heaven...is a promise that there is no mistaking whom it is for.

"The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call."

Pay attention to that! There is no "Well if we just had what they had..." There can be no, "I would do better if only God gave me what He gave them..." God, through Peter, specifically spoke down through the centuries to make absolutely sure you would hear the message today...right now! The promise is for you!

It's incredible to me that with thousands of people who responded that day, God looked past the excitement of the day and inspired Peter to speak not just to the thronging crowd in front of him, but to their children and to all who are far off! Indeed to anyone whom God would call!

That's me! That's you if you've answered God's call!

So what is the promise?

"You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit!"

We sometimes tend to focus on the front half of this passage. The part that we are supposed to do. Once we are convicted of the truth of God's message, what do we do? Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. We drill that...and with good reason. It's the only proper response of faith. But in focusing on what we are to do, let's not lose what God promises to do in addition to the fact that He already killed His Son....in addition to receiving the forgiveness of sins. That should be enough but God doesn't stop. The real promise is the gift of Himself! He gives us the gift of the Spirit!

There are entire books that try to cover what exactly that gift is. I can't, and won't, try to cover that here...you wouldn't keep reading if I did! But for now, I want you to meditate on the fact of the truth of the gift itself. I guarantee we could spend the rest of our earthly lives figuring out new things that the gift of the Spirit entails. How fun would it be to wake up every morning knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that because God has called me down through the ages, I can go through the day in possession of the gift of the Spirit!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that would change your day. What has the gift of the Spirit done for you? How have you seen it in your life? If you have no idea what the gift of the Spirit is, then I challenge you to spend the day...and the week...and the month...and the rest of your life pondering that question and learning! And then live with the love and the excitement and the thrill and the purpose and the joy that the early Church did because we have all been given the same gift of the Spirit.

Never Stop! Acts 28

What would it take to get us to stop sharing about what God has done for us through Christ and what He wants to do for every person we come into contact with?

Do we stop talking when we feel awkward?
Do we stop when it is uncomfortable?
Do we quit when we meet resistance?
Would we quit if we were warned we could lose our job?
Would we quit if we were warned we would lose our life?
Would we keep our faith to ourselves if we knew we might lose our family by speaking?
Would we get frustrated and give up if we lost some of our freedom because of the cause of Christ?

What would it take?

As we come to the end of the year and to the end of the book of Acts, I can't help but think back to the overwhelming sense that the first century Christians would stop at absolutely nothing to serve their Lord. They endured beatings and imprisonment. They rejoiced in persecution. They deliberately disobeyed the authorities who tried to silence them because they claimed a higher Authority.

Here at the end of Luke's record of the early church, we see Paul under house arrest in Rome. It's incredible to me that Luke just leaves Paul imprisoned! But I think it speaks volumes that Luke concludes his history of the early church by saying that Paul just simply continued to proclaim the kingdom of God and continued to teach about the Lord Jesus Christ.

That mission was his everything.

It consumed him and it drove every decision he made. It set his purpose in every day. His words, thoughts, and actions all flowed from the one supreme force in his life- the grace of Jesus that he met on the road to Damascus so many years before.

As you look toward the New Year and begin to think of resolutions and plans for the future, I want to challenge you to think of one question. Is there anything in the coming days and in the coming year that will keep you from proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching someone about the Lord Jesus Christ? Will your circumstances or your family? Will your time constraints or your finances? Will your pride or your selfishness?

If there is anything at all that you can think of that would keep you from proclaiming Him...I want to challenge you to knock that idol down and start 2015 with the passion and the purpose that we read about in the book of Acts.

May we not let anything ever stop us from proclaiming the kingdom that we have been given entrance into. And may that kingdom spread and God be glorified because of it.


Don't forget to post a response to this week's VOW or last week's with your suggestions for future VOWs. I am looking for promises of God from scripture to write about in the coming weeks. I really love researching and writing about things that other people hold dear because it challenges me to grow and study passages that I may not already be familiar with. May God bless you in the coming year!

A Lasting Christmas Wish- Acts 26:29

Have you sent out or given any Christmas wishes lately? Or have you asked any children what they are wishing for for Christmas?

This time of year in our culture is consumed with trying to figure out the correct gift to give someone. We want to pick out the perfect gift and we want to enjoy the look on someone's face when they open a present from us that they really are excited about and don't have to fake it!

We also change our greetings during the holidays. Instead of "See ya later," or, "Hey, How's it going?" now we say, "Merry Christmas!" If you've gone caroling, you've probably even sung, "We wish you a merry Christmas."

In all of the merry wishing and gift giving and holiday parties, have you wished for the one thing for the people you love that actually matters?

In Acts 26, Paul is on trial...unfairly. He had a right to be upset about it. People were accusing him falsely and maliciously. His life was on the balance. But as you read Paul's defense before Agrippa, Paul quickly pivots from defending his actions to placing Agrippa on trial in a way. Paul's very defense is focused solely on winning the souls of those who are listening! And after he talks about the prophets pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, he challenges Agrippa to see the truth for himself. I'm sure you've heard Agrippa's famous response before.

“Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”                                  -  Acts 26:28

And that is the statement that provokes Paul's wish that whether it happens quickly or it takes a lifetime, he wishes that Agrippa and everyone else within earshot would gain everything that Paul had gained through Christ...except of course the chains!

I point to that verse, because as we get close to the end of the book of Acts, I hope one of the reasons the early Christian church spread as rapidly and as powerfully as it did has become extremely clear. I think Paul's comment sums up his entire life after conversion. It was all about the saving love of Christ! He saw no one whom he didn't wish for their soul to be saved! Why? Because HE HIMSELF HAD BEEN SAVED!

I'm not sure who said it, but I have a quote hanging on my door that says,

To be a disciple of Christ is to make disciples of Christ. It is impossible to know Christ without having an urgent desire to make Him known.

So here's my challenge as we close out this year. The next time you say "Merry Christmas" to someone...or the next time you ask a child what they are wishing to get from Santa. Let that be a trigger that reminds you to think about the one gift that really matters. It's not peace during the holiday season. It's not toys or sweaters or egg nog or fruit cake. It's the gift of salvation.

And when you think about that during your conversation. Say a quick prayer for that person right there on the spot. And then let that prayer guide your comments and your conversation. Is there anything you might say or do that would confront them with the love and truth of the Good News? Is there something you might do for the parents of the child that would allow them to grow up in a home that is filled with grace and love instead of just filled with presents under the tree?

It is impossible to know Christ without without having an urgent desire to make Him known.

Do you have that desire? If not, then my wish is also for you to know Him in a new way.

Worry, worry, worry- Matthew 6:24

Last year I took a General Psychology class as a per-requisite for nursing school. One of the things discussed in the class was a thing called "Maslow's Hierarchy of needs," which is a theory of psychological development. If you want more info on it, you can check out Wikipedia's page here. Here is the gist of it: you can't progress to being motivated to growing in certain areas until you have already achieved other areas. For example, you're not really gonna care about how many friends you have until you have already obtained the basic needs of survival such as air, food, and water. Here is a visual diagram of the theory:

This concept is apparently used a lot in the nursing process because I have already heard it referred to several times in just a few weeks of classes. And it makes sense when you are prioritizing care for a patient. If someone can't breathe...you probably need to work on that before working on a weight loss plan!

But even back in General Psych., I remember thinking when I first saw this pyramid that in a sense, Christianity takes the pyramid and flips it completely on its head....or at least Jesus did that even if we Christians are a little slow to follow!

You'll notice that morality is at the top of the pyramid in the self-actualization stage and food and water are at the base. In other words, we need to worry about food and water before worrying about morality. But Jesus knocks the base completely out in Matthew 6 when he talks about worry. "Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?" Well...from an evolutionary standpoint, then the answer is definitely "no." Nothing is more important that survival!

But what if this world isn't actually the most real reality?

Let me put it another way: which has more substance, a flower that blooms for a few days and then wilts away or an oak tree that can live hundreds of year? Obviously they are both real, but if you had to answer which is most real, which would you say? You would say the tree because the reality of the tree will last for hundreds more years than the reality of the flower that will be nothing more than a memory within a month or two at the most and unless it is immortalized in poetry or song or picture, that memory won't even be a memory within a year or two and definitely won't last more than a generation or three!

This world is very easy for us to see, touch, taste, smell, and feel. It feels very real to us. And it is real. But it's not all there is!!! In fact, comparatively speaking, the spiritual world is much more real because it will last, not just hundreds of years longer, but infinitely longer. And that is why life is more important than food and the body is more important than clothing. Because those things are only tools for what is truly important...the unseen things that will last forever!

We are going to look at these worries in a little more detail in the next weeks as we continue through the passage, but I want to start this week by encouraging you to think about how Jesus asks us to turn our concepts of "needs" upside down. When we teach our kids about the difference between needs and wants, we typically classify food and shelter as a need. After all, we need it to survive. But what if we as Christian parents are missing a golden opportunity to teach them from a very young age that even our "needs" like food and water and clothing are things that God will provide, but there are even more important things to our survival than those.

Do you remember the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4? Jesus stayed at the well because he was tired and his apostles went into town to get food. While they were gone was when Jesus had the incredible conversation about living water with the woman who had been married 5 times already. In that conversation he revealed to her that he was the Messiah. When the disciples came back with the food and urged him to eat. And do you know what his response was? "I have food to eat that you know nothing about" (John 4:32).

I'll let you draw your own conclusions about what exactly sustained Jesus' physical body. If you have an answer for that, I'd like to hear it. What I do know is that Jesus didn't worry about his food, he worried about the things that his body were actually purposed for...revealing to a sinful person who the Messiah was and offering living water.

May we have the same attitude and singularity of purpose in our lives and may our worry over those things that we have always viewed as "needs" take their rightful  second place in our thoughts.