| Acts - Great read in one sitting! |
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Earth hour – sat down with my flashlight in hand and decided to take the journey through Acts in one sitting. Really makes much more sense than reading it piecemeal. If you haven't done it, try it. 1. Reckless guys with a who cares about me attitude 2. Who are these guys anyway? 3. God the ultimate corraborator 4. Other people prove our sincerity and intent 5. Christianity - not for wimps Click Read more... 1. Reckless guys with a who cares about me attitude – These guys really didn’t care what happens to themselves. You see your friends being slaughtered and that motivates you to be more obedient Christ and aggressively get the message out. How convinced they must have been that they were absolutely doing the right thing. 2. Just who are these guys anyway? – So they chose 7 key guys to run many of the key church responsibilities - daily distribution of food etc. But who are these guys really? (Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas) Do you know anything about them? No names really! Yes BUT because of them it says “So the word of God spread”. What would have happened if these “no names” didn’t step up? 3. God the ultimate corraborator – the ultimate creativity and real sense of humour of God to corroborate stories that will convince them of the truth. a) Had Peter simply seen that vision of a large blanket of animals he might have thought it was just a really bad dream, indigestion or something worse. But because God asks Cornelius to send someone to fetch Peter, Peter is finally convinced as the leader of the church not to show favoritism and instead include the Gentiles. b) Saul being blinded on the road. Then God in his wisdom gives Saul the vision that a guy named Ananias will come and see you. Ananias “blindly” goes to a known murderer’s house to remove the scales from his eyes. c) Tongues – people are not persuaded that the Gospel is true until they hear it in their own language by people who don’t know what they are saying. 4. Other people can prove a leader’s sincerity and intent – Who would have believed Paul was the “real deal” unless a guy like Barnabbas was carefully watching Paul convincing the Gentiles. Hey perhaps if Barnabbas had not observed and vouched for his friend Paul the bible might have been significantly shorter for us to read. 5. Christianity - not for wimps - Tonnes of opposition in almost every city visited. Why do we want church to be so sanitary and nice. Arguments, jail, shipwrecks. Even among those on the same team, Paul and Barnabbas disagree and decide to split and go on separate journeys. Despite this disagreement in philosophy the gospel manages to get spread even more to different regions as a result. Noel
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