An Unexpected Continuation
For the next two years, Paul lived in Rome at his own expense. He welcomed all who visited him, boldly proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. And no one tried to stop him.
Acts 28:30-31 New Living Translation
This was a weird way to end the story! Why build up to something and then stop it abruptly? In the final chapters of Acts, we can see that the religious gas bags have mobbed Paul and intend to kill him. A “death vow” is made by more religious boneheads to ambush Paul and murder him. Paul, on his way to Rome for the final showdown, is shipwrecked. After a snake bite and a three month layover Gilligan’s Island style, Paul and his companions finally make it to Rome and . . . well . . . he just goes on preaching. That sort of seems like the let down of all endings. I expected Paul to do a miracle, or convince a whole town to become Christians, or do something totally unexpected. But the end was lackluster, I think, for a perfectly good reason. The end of Acts has not actually happened. You and I are the continuing story of Acts. We keep the story going by praying for, teaching, healing, loving and telling others of Jesus. When we tell our personal stories of how Jesus saves us we are taking part in the ministry to reach the world that is lead by the Holy Spirit. The final words in Acts, “And no one tried to stop him,” bring to mind that no one can stop the spread of the good news except those of us that have learned it, live it, and hide it. How are you continuing the story?
Friday, April 30, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Holy Hankies?
Holy Hankies?
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Acts 19:11-12 New International Version
I’m sorry, Holy Spirit . . . .
I need to apologize to the Holy Spirit up front and confess my sin. My sin is that during the original writing for this verse, I was sarcastic. I was making a comical story over the unusual way God’s Spirit (or the Spirit of Jesus as He is called in Acts 16:7) moved and healed many. I made mention that it seemed silly that God would inhabit a napkin or a kerchief to bring healing to someone. I made mention of a religious program on television where they wanted you to mail in a cloth or hankie along with a small donation. The ministry would pray over the cloths and mail them back. And right at that point is when my sin started. I had this sly grin curling itself over my face. I could feel myself not believing that God would work this way. Idiotic ideas popped into my head like, “Does the hankie need to be cotton, or will polyester work? What if all I have is a ripped piece of denim off my jeans, will that suffice?” I was seeing this unusual move of the Spirit as silly and that is where the Holy Spirit convicted me.
I think my joking and attitude about this strange move of the Spirit was my putting down someone’s blessing. If you have mailed out your prayer cloths, and God has blessed you, well . . . , then bless you. If you say it was real, I believe you. It was certainly real for the people that God decided to bless in this situation with Paul. It was and is a unique circumstance. Paul and his crew may have been the only ones for miles that knew God, and this was a very special way for one man to reach a whole town or city. Even though this Holy Spirit endowed napkin thing is unique, I should not be shocked. Unique is nothing new for God. I remember other exceptional moves of God such as Elisha’s bones being filled with enough of God’s power that just a touch brought a man back to life (2 Kings 13:21) and how the Holy Spirit used Peter’s shadow as a healing device (Acts 5:15). I suppose this type of story is telling me that God can move any way He wants, when He wants. He heals so that we can know He sympathizes with our pain, having endured it himself while in the flesh. I think God healed (or heals) so that it acts as a supernatural sign for things to come . . . .
By the way, my knee hurts. Anybody got a hankie? I believe now.
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Acts 19:11-12 New International Version
I’m sorry, Holy Spirit . . . .
I need to apologize to the Holy Spirit up front and confess my sin. My sin is that during the original writing for this verse, I was sarcastic. I was making a comical story over the unusual way God’s Spirit (or the Spirit of Jesus as He is called in Acts 16:7) moved and healed many. I made mention that it seemed silly that God would inhabit a napkin or a kerchief to bring healing to someone. I made mention of a religious program on television where they wanted you to mail in a cloth or hankie along with a small donation. The ministry would pray over the cloths and mail them back. And right at that point is when my sin started. I had this sly grin curling itself over my face. I could feel myself not believing that God would work this way. Idiotic ideas popped into my head like, “Does the hankie need to be cotton, or will polyester work? What if all I have is a ripped piece of denim off my jeans, will that suffice?” I was seeing this unusual move of the Spirit as silly and that is where the Holy Spirit convicted me.
I think my joking and attitude about this strange move of the Spirit was my putting down someone’s blessing. If you have mailed out your prayer cloths, and God has blessed you, well . . . , then bless you. If you say it was real, I believe you. It was certainly real for the people that God decided to bless in this situation with Paul. It was and is a unique circumstance. Paul and his crew may have been the only ones for miles that knew God, and this was a very special way for one man to reach a whole town or city. Even though this Holy Spirit endowed napkin thing is unique, I should not be shocked. Unique is nothing new for God. I remember other exceptional moves of God such as Elisha’s bones being filled with enough of God’s power that just a touch brought a man back to life (2 Kings 13:21) and how the Holy Spirit used Peter’s shadow as a healing device (Acts 5:15). I suppose this type of story is telling me that God can move any way He wants, when He wants. He heals so that we can know He sympathizes with our pain, having endured it himself while in the flesh. I think God healed (or heals) so that it acts as a supernatural sign for things to come . . . .
By the way, my knee hurts. Anybody got a hankie? I believe now.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Grace Only
Grace Only
So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.
Acts 15:10-11 New Living Translation
I sat in a Bible study for about a month. Every week we discussed salvation and how it is obtained. I kept struggling with different ideas in my head. Every time I mulled over an objection, another verse popped up about salvation coming from grace. I pondered baptism, living a God styled life and keeping the Big Ten as vehicles to achieve salvation. Of course, we also need to stay clear of the traditional do not things. Do not curse, drink, smoke, lose your temper, and do not hold grudges. But the flaw in that sort of reasoning is that a person can actually obtain salvation through any of those things. How do you earn your salvation? Maybe I should ask if you think you have earned it on your own.
According to Paul and Barnabas, salvation comes from grace. God’s special favor is what brings salvation. Does not the scripture say that salvation is given by grace so that no man or woman can brag about their achievement (Ephesians 2:8-9)? I think we humans, especially we Americans, are driven to succeed. Some people feel the need to succeed even at the cost of others. This high desire to define ourselves by our achievements is not new, and is frankly an obstacle to receiving God’s full measure of grace. I see earning salvation the same as putting the cart in front of the horse. God saves us and then we respond to this salvation by getting baptized, by living with better more godly choices. Imagine falling toward the edge of a cliff, and someone grabs your hand to keep you from falling. Did you have any power in your rescue? No, you were wholly dependent upon the person holding you. I’ll put it a different way, a friend and I were bantering about salvation wholly from grace vs. human assisted salvation. My friend asked me, “Doesn’t the Bible say that we are dead in our sin?” He was quoting Ephesians 2:1, but I did not know it at the time.
“Yes it does” I said.
“Then,” he asked, “how does a dead man call for help?”
Prayer: Dear Father, thank you for blessing me with unmerited salvation. Amen.
So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.
Acts 15:10-11 New Living Translation
I sat in a Bible study for about a month. Every week we discussed salvation and how it is obtained. I kept struggling with different ideas in my head. Every time I mulled over an objection, another verse popped up about salvation coming from grace. I pondered baptism, living a God styled life and keeping the Big Ten as vehicles to achieve salvation. Of course, we also need to stay clear of the traditional do not things. Do not curse, drink, smoke, lose your temper, and do not hold grudges. But the flaw in that sort of reasoning is that a person can actually obtain salvation through any of those things. How do you earn your salvation? Maybe I should ask if you think you have earned it on your own.
According to Paul and Barnabas, salvation comes from grace. God’s special favor is what brings salvation. Does not the scripture say that salvation is given by grace so that no man or woman can brag about their achievement (Ephesians 2:8-9)? I think we humans, especially we Americans, are driven to succeed. Some people feel the need to succeed even at the cost of others. This high desire to define ourselves by our achievements is not new, and is frankly an obstacle to receiving God’s full measure of grace. I see earning salvation the same as putting the cart in front of the horse. God saves us and then we respond to this salvation by getting baptized, by living with better more godly choices. Imagine falling toward the edge of a cliff, and someone grabs your hand to keep you from falling. Did you have any power in your rescue? No, you were wholly dependent upon the person holding you. I’ll put it a different way, a friend and I were bantering about salvation wholly from grace vs. human assisted salvation. My friend asked me, “Doesn’t the Bible say that we are dead in our sin?” He was quoting Ephesians 2:1, but I did not know it at the time.
“Yes it does” I said.
“Then,” he asked, “how does a dead man call for help?”
Prayer: Dear Father, thank you for blessing me with unmerited salvation. Amen.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Reformed Racist
Reformed Racist
He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.”
“No, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.” But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”
Acts 10:11-15 New Living Translation
At the time, I did not know it had a name. But I learned about it all too well around age nine. I was a crossing guard in elementary school. We were required to wait an extra five minutes after the bell rang in case there were stragglers. As I waited for late kids, an adult white woman approached and mumbled as she passed by. I asked her what she said as she was staring directly at me. She pushed me to the ground and screamed, “You fucking nigger! That’s what I said, you nigger! What are you gonna do about it!”
Over the years, I have come across a few people that have a superiority complex. They feel that their race esteems them above everyone else. I wonder how they developed that false idea of identity. I wonder if they look at the lesser evolved as slightly overdeveloped farm animals that are not yet genetically worthy of inclusion into the human race.
I would venture to say that Peter had this same issue. While he was indeed full of God’s Spirit, he also had to struggle with the issue of race on more than one occasion. He had to be reminded of grace when he asked Jesus if he and the other disciples could ask for the destruction of Samaria (Samaritans were half pagan and half Jew). He also had to deal with the rebuke of Paul when he swapped dinner tables from gentiles to Jews at a public meal (Galatians 2:11-12). In our verse for the day, Peter shows some promise as he decided to live with a leather maker while on a missionary journey. Leather makers were considered unclean as they touched dead animals for their vocation. But obviously, the issue still needed attention. God shows Peter a bunch of the wrong things to eat. Then God proclaims them clean.
I think this lesson is specifically for Peter and those that feel other humans are beneath them. Do you have a problem with someone because they are not like you? Are Mexicans only a bunch of wetbacks, and Italians dagoes? When is the last time you said, thought, or chuckled at words like nigger, kike, Ms Ann, Mr. Charlie, coon, gook, kaffir, porch monkey, redneck, slant eye, dot head, towel head or whitey?
If God’s Spirit is truly residing in you, then none of those terms should ever enter your mind or vocabulary again. Why? Because God has declared them clean. Maybe you too can be a reformed racist.
He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.”
“No, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.” But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”
Acts 10:11-15 New Living Translation
At the time, I did not know it had a name. But I learned about it all too well around age nine. I was a crossing guard in elementary school. We were required to wait an extra five minutes after the bell rang in case there were stragglers. As I waited for late kids, an adult white woman approached and mumbled as she passed by. I asked her what she said as she was staring directly at me. She pushed me to the ground and screamed, “You fucking nigger! That’s what I said, you nigger! What are you gonna do about it!”
Over the years, I have come across a few people that have a superiority complex. They feel that their race esteems them above everyone else. I wonder how they developed that false idea of identity. I wonder if they look at the lesser evolved as slightly overdeveloped farm animals that are not yet genetically worthy of inclusion into the human race.
I would venture to say that Peter had this same issue. While he was indeed full of God’s Spirit, he also had to struggle with the issue of race on more than one occasion. He had to be reminded of grace when he asked Jesus if he and the other disciples could ask for the destruction of Samaria (Samaritans were half pagan and half Jew). He also had to deal with the rebuke of Paul when he swapped dinner tables from gentiles to Jews at a public meal (Galatians 2:11-12). In our verse for the day, Peter shows some promise as he decided to live with a leather maker while on a missionary journey. Leather makers were considered unclean as they touched dead animals for their vocation. But obviously, the issue still needed attention. God shows Peter a bunch of the wrong things to eat. Then God proclaims them clean.
I think this lesson is specifically for Peter and those that feel other humans are beneath them. Do you have a problem with someone because they are not like you? Are Mexicans only a bunch of wetbacks, and Italians dagoes? When is the last time you said, thought, or chuckled at words like nigger, kike, Ms Ann, Mr. Charlie, coon, gook, kaffir, porch monkey, redneck, slant eye, dot head, towel head or whitey?
If God’s Spirit is truly residing in you, then none of those terms should ever enter your mind or vocabulary again. Why? Because God has declared them clean. Maybe you too can be a reformed racist.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Failing Jesus
Failing Jesus
Meanwhile, Simon Peter was back at the fire, still trying to get warm. The others there said to him, "Aren't you one of his disciples?" He denied it, "Not me.”
John 18:25 The Message
I was in a play where I had to portray Judas and the other person acted as Simon Peter. We both wore black on a dimly lit stage. Our conversation was about whether to continue a belief in Jesus right after his crucifixion. The tension in the play was due to our both having betrayed Jesus, but one of us lost all hope and the other had not. My character saw failure as separation. Do you feel the same way about God?
I once had a discussion about this very topic with a friend. I told her that God loved her. She replied that he didn’t. I asked her why she felt that way. She said, “I’ve done too many bad things to be forgiven or loved.”
But doesn’t grace cover that? I am not speaking of cheap grace that means you go out and do what you want without fear of reprisal. I mean real grace. The kind that says, “I know you messed up. I know that sometimes there are consequences for your behavior, but we can get through this together.” I think Peter understood Real Grace even if he did not know what it was called.
I would say that failing Jesus is a prerequisite for following him. If you have never failed him, then it wasn’t Jesus you were serving.
What I liked about our play was that Peter offered up an idea that may not have been so popular. Peter’s life suggested room for error and reconciliation. I think that failing Jesus is a place where no one wants to be, but while we are there, we can take in the lesson that Jesus still forgives, he still reconciles, and he still wants us. And maybe, that is what he expected in the first place.
Meanwhile, Simon Peter was back at the fire, still trying to get warm. The others there said to him, "Aren't you one of his disciples?" He denied it, "Not me.”
John 18:25 The Message
I was in a play where I had to portray Judas and the other person acted as Simon Peter. We both wore black on a dimly lit stage. Our conversation was about whether to continue a belief in Jesus right after his crucifixion. The tension in the play was due to our both having betrayed Jesus, but one of us lost all hope and the other had not. My character saw failure as separation. Do you feel the same way about God?
I once had a discussion about this very topic with a friend. I told her that God loved her. She replied that he didn’t. I asked her why she felt that way. She said, “I’ve done too many bad things to be forgiven or loved.”
But doesn’t grace cover that? I am not speaking of cheap grace that means you go out and do what you want without fear of reprisal. I mean real grace. The kind that says, “I know you messed up. I know that sometimes there are consequences for your behavior, but we can get through this together.” I think Peter understood Real Grace even if he did not know what it was called.
I would say that failing Jesus is a prerequisite for following him. If you have never failed him, then it wasn’t Jesus you were serving.
What I liked about our play was that Peter offered up an idea that may not have been so popular. Peter’s life suggested room for error and reconciliation. I think that failing Jesus is a place where no one wants to be, but while we are there, we can take in the lesson that Jesus still forgives, he still reconciles, and he still wants us. And maybe, that is what he expected in the first place.
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