Acts 3

Day 3 of my journey through Acts. I’m not sure my mind, my pride, or my typing fingers, can take as much challenge as I’ve received from God so far through the first two chapters, but I am really enjoying the journey. Reading God’s word has always been comparable to working out for me. Thankfully I enjoy spending time reading my Bible more than I do working out, and am much more consistent with it, but they are comparable in my mind. Reading God’s word is satisfying and it grows me and matures me and prepares me to face the world and do what I am called to do in the place and time that God has dropped me into, but it’s not easy. It takes pain and hardship and trouble to grow stronger physically, and the same can be said of maturing spiritually. It’s not easy, it’s painful to see where I fall short when its easy to begin thinking I’m doing things pretty well. It’s hard to receive the conviction from Acts 1 that I haven’t represented the image of Christ through the Bride of Christ to the people of Christ very well, or to have God smack me in Acts 2 and say Ryan you have been arrogant in your view of Scripture, in your view of me. Those things are tough to hear, but I know I need to hear and grow from those things to mature in my walk with Christ. So, I am enjoying working out with God and I hope you are as well.

 I didn’t get very far into chapter 3 without seeing something that God does often throughout His word in his use of details of a story that seem insignificant but really are a picture into who God is. A man, lame from birth, spent his entire life up to this point lying by the temple gate which was called “Beautiful”. I think I can correctly assume that this man would not have been viewed as beautiful by many, if any, people that walked by him every day. But, as God looked down at him from Heaven, I can just hear Him saying, yep there’s one of mine, and he’s beautiful. Not because what he looks like on the outside or what he has done with his life, or even because he is lying beside a beautiful structure, no he is beautiful because he is one of mine. We as men often look at the structures and label them beautiful, whereas God looks at the people. A conviction I’ve been wrestling with for months, if not a year, is have we as the church gone wrong when it comes to our buildings? Have we built beautiful, elaborate houses of worship, do we have temple gates that we’ve labeled beautiful, all at the expense of ignoring, both with our eyes and ears but also our use of funds, the people wasting away in need of our help.  The early church had a place to meet for worship, without a doubt, but they didn’t pay for it, they didn’t tie up all their resources in it. They met in houses and shared generously with all that had need. Maybe they had it right.

I like Peter, a lot. Through the power of Jesus this man is healed, and he begins to make a scene. Everybody starts looking at them and rejoicing in what happened and a crowd begins to form. My personality would have been to stand in the background and let this guy go around and tell everyone what God had done. As people would have come to me and praised me for what I did, I definitely would have given the glory to God but also backed off a little bit. I would attribute it to humility, but I think the better description of that is a lack of boldness. A crowd was gathering, an audience was captured, and rather than reveling in the incredible miracle that God had performed Peter took the opportunity to let God speak even more. He didn’t back down or take the foot off the gas pedal, he pushed even harder. Peter stood up and reminded them, he didn’t tell them something they didn’t already know, he reminded them of what happened to Christ and what their role in that process was. Peter seized the moment to preach the gospel, and he made no apologies for it. Verse 15 contains fighting words and Peter let them have it. Am I willing to stand up and proclaim the gospel of Christ the way Peter did? Am I willing to risk saying some things I shouldn’t (Peter was accused of this a time or two) in an effort to say the things I should? You can’t get into as much trouble if you keep your mouth shut, but God didn’t put me on this Earth to keep my mouth shut.

This concept reminds me of a verse from James chapter 4 that flipped my whole perspective on how I should be living my life. Several years ago I was reading through James chapter 4 and came to verse 17, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. “So it is a sin for the person who knows to do what is good and doesn’t do it.” All my life I had grown up hearing about the sins that were listed in the Bible and I tried to avoid them, well most of the time. The Bible, my relationship with God, was pretty black and white. You live by the book, don’t do the things the Bible tells you not to do, and you will be good with God. And, for the most part, I was all right with that. I could keep track and watch my step and do pretty well not murdering or stealing or things like that, so I felt pretty good. Then, I come to this passage, which I had read and blown by many times before, and everything changes. Now, not only do I have to worry about not doing the things that the Bible told me not to do; now I’ve got to start paying attention to the good things I know I should do and do those as well. How in the world could I possibly check things off that list when the list doesn’t even exist? That moment is when I first really began to come to grips with the fact that my faith and my relationship with God and my righteousness before God could not be dependent on me. If it was up to me, I’d fail, I’d fall short, every time. That’s when I began to understand that I needed something, someone, much greater than myself to not only stop doing the sins listed out that I shouldn’t be doing but also to identify and carry out in doing the good that I knew I needed to do. That is a moment I can now look back to and identify as the start of my journey of figuring out what it means to walk with and live by the Holy Spirit of God. Knowing that I don’t have to be dependent on me is incredibly freeing. Knowing that the Spirit helps me, guides me, intercedes for me, gives me power, gives me words to speak, gives me energy when I don’t have it, and most of all binds me with Christ, is incredibly freeing, satisfying, and overwhelming.

The final thought I feel like God wants me to pull out of chapter 3 is from the last verse. God sent Jesus to bless us by turning us from our evil ways. He blesses us. So often in our world becoming a follower of Christ is synonymous with giving up all the fun things you like to do. It’s almost as if God wants us to be miserable so if we want to be on His side we have to give up everything that makes us happy and live a boring life, following all the rules, until the day we die. That doesn’t sound like blessing to me, that sounds like torture. Jesus came to give us a blessing, and that blessing is at least two-fold. First of all, evil behavior leads to evil consequences which leads to a tough life with a lot of suffering, and not the kind of suffering Jesus praises people for in the Bible. Jesus wants to free us from the desires and consequences of sin, and that is an incredible blessing. Looking back at my life from this vantage point, I definitely went through a time where I viewed “living the Christian life” as a burden and even as torture, but now I can see the benefit and the blessing it has been to allow Christ to turn me from my evil ways. Secondly, Jesus blesses us in a way we can’t and won’t understand until we take our last breath. By turning us from our evil ways, aka becoming a follower of Jesus, He blesses us by taking our sins and nailing them to the cross, allowing God’s wrath, of which we are fully deserving, to be absorbed by His perfection, making up for our gross imperfection. He blesses us by ushering us into His Kingdom forever, to be in the presence of God forever. That blessing is far greater than any cost that might be associated with it. Even if you approach the idea of following Jesus on this Earth as a burden or as torture (which its not), that burden is well worth the eternity of blessing you will receive. Jesus is a blessing, let us not ever forget that.

Peter takes every opportunity to have eternal conversations with people, just like Jesus did in the gospels. There was no small talk, no talking about the weather or the local sports team or anything like that, they didn’t mess around, but I do.

Why?

Why do I hesitate to talk about Heaven, to talk about Jesus, to talk about redemption from sin? Why do I wait and see if the perfect opportunity arises to mention God rather than guiding and directing every conversation that way?

Lord you are a blessing to me and to the millions of others that follow you. You are a blessing-in-waiting to the millions that haven’t yet chosen to follow you. May more and more people accept that blessing, and may more and more people appreciate that blessing. Lord if I appreciated the blessing you are and have been more than I do right now, I would more readily have eternal conversations with those around me like Peter did, like Jesus did. If I truly want to utilize the Holy Spirit like I say I do, I need to submit when He tells me to speak, to push when He tells me to push, and to step on that gas pedal when He tells me to step. Lord help me in that because I’m a chicken sometimes, a lot of times.