- Act It Out
- No comments
The letter of Acts is written by Luke as a follow up to his biography of the life of Christ, that we call the gospel of Luke. This is a picture of what we are supposed to do after looking at the life of Christ – Love God, Love People, and GO! God wants His grace to flood out into the world, and we are the method that He chose to do that.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).
If you are reading this and you’re a follow of Jesus, you don’t need more knowledge or seminary training before you can take the message and act it out. It’s the mission that you have been given. How are you doing it? Are you leveraging your relationships to talk about Jesus? Are you meeting people and sharing Christ? Are you a functioning member of the New Testament church? This is God’s story. We get to be in it, we get to play a part, if we chose not to fall asleep and allow our hearts to grow cold and stoney. God is waiting for you to wake up so He can use you, it might not be what you would chose for yourself, but He knows you better than you know yourself!
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).
God wants us to push the gospel into every corner of Harrison county, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. It will be hard, it will be messy, opposition will come from outside of the church and from inside the church, but if we go empowered by the Holy Spirit, the gospel will not be stopped!
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
If we live out an authentic life that’s a picture of the gospel then people that are searching will be drawn to that. God also wants us to do our part pushing the gospel out to the ends of the earth through supporting missions and maybe even going ourselves! God was doing something fresh and new in the book of acts and that’s how God still works today. If things are stuffy and stale and stagnant then something is wrong! We are a continuation of these vibrant and thriving churches in the book of Acts and it’s your calling to live this out as the church. People being saved, baptized, discipled, and sent ought to be a common occurrence here but it only happens when you join into the story. How do you do this? Devote yourselves to God’s word, live in community together with other believers, and pray together.
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42).