blaze

(Part 3 of 5 on the book of Acts)

“So the word of God spread.” — Acts 6:7

I’ve often thought that the earliest days of the church must have resembled a kind of holy, uncontrollable brushfire. Once the word of God had ignited bone-dry hearts and empty, parched lives, salvation’s fire blazed out of control. It spread quickly from person to person, from village to village, from region to region.

Do the math: Jesus discipled 12 men during his three-year earthly ministry. By Pentecost (just 50 days after the resurrection), there are 120 disciples gathered for prayer. By the end of the day of Pentecost, that number surges to 3,120. Once we get to Acts 5, there are too many disciples to count.

This is where the growing pains kick in. In Acts 6 we hear some rumblings of discontent. Specifically, the Greek Jews thought their widows were being neglected by the Hebrew Jews. The apostles were spread pretty thin by now, too—their nonstop preaching, praying, healing, and table waiting were proving quite stressful. They knew that if they were to focus on their calling—prayer and ministry of the word—they needed to train others to tend to the practical needs of the growing church.

This is nothing short of a divine formula for implementing the great commission. Anointed preaching, supported by prayer and carried out in a setting where Christ’s love is faithfully and practically revealed, will spark a spectacular and Spirit-fueled blaze.

And that’s exactly what happened. In Acts 6:7, Luke writes, “So the Word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.”

Over and over, scripture reveals the power of God’s word. In Jeremiah 23:29, the Lord asks, “Is not my word like fire?” In Hebrews 4:12 we read that His word is “living and active.” In Isaiah 55:11, God declares, “My word…will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes from hearing the word of Christ.

As believers, we carry within us a powerful truth that is teeming with life and able to illuminate even the darkest places with its brilliant and heart-changing flame. Every day that God wakes us up to go out into a hurting and fallen world, we must choose to spread His word, or to hoard His word. In obedience and with a great sense that God was doing something truly immense, the believers of the early church boldly proclaimed Jesus—through preaching, through prayer, and through compassionate ministry. And like fire, the word spread.

Jesus, you are the Word. You are the reason that a rag-tag group of 12 disciples has grown into a church that spans the globe. Yet there are still so many who have not heard. Would you cause my life to intersect with those who need to hear the beautiful news of your salvation? Would you ignite their dry and brittle hearts with the powerful flame of your word? I ask this in your name, the only name worth proclaiming. Amen.

truth

(Part 2 of 5 on the book of Acts)

“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” — 3 John 1:4

How important is truth to God? From Genesis 3 (in which the lie of the serpent—“you will not surely die”—forever alters creation), through Revelation 19 (where the rider on the white horse is called “Faithful and True”), there are hundreds of references to truth and lying in scripture.

Hebrews 6:18 tells us “it is impossible for God to lie.” Conversely, Jesus states in John 8:44 that satan is “a liar and the father of lies.” The Psalmist talks repeatedly of desiring truth, walking in truth, and trusting in the word of truth. Isaiah 53:9 foretells the coming of One who has “no deceit in his mouth.” And, in fulfillment of that prophesy, Jesus over and over begins his teachings with the statement “I tell you the truth” and plainly states in John 14:6 that he is the truth.

Without a doubt, God values truth and defines it in absolute terms. The more thorny question is, do we?

According to at least one recent survey, Americans in general think that truth is relative, with a third of respondents saying that truth always depends on the circumstances and another third saying they just don’t know if truth is absolute.

In Acts 5 we can read the stark and cautionary tale of two members of the early church—Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple—who shared this belief that truth is relative and, therefore, inconsequential. But in one of scripture’s hardest teachings, we see that truth is anything but inconsequential.

Ananias and Sapphira had recently witnessed Barnabas, a fellow member of the church, sell his property and give the money to the apostles to be distributed to those in need. The couple decided to follow Barnabas’s lead, but with one key difference. They kept back part of the money for themselves. This would not have been a problem, except that Ananias and Sapphira told everyone that their contribution was the full amount they received for the land.

Maybe they thought their lie was harmless… after all, they were giving a significant amount to the church. Or perhaps they craved recognition for their generosity and thought the full truth might tarnish their image.

Regardless of the circumstances that dictated their definition of the truth, Ananias and Sapphira paid a heavy price: They both fell dead when confronted with their lie. The Apostle Peter was very clear about the nature of their sin when he said to them, “You have not lied to men but to God” and, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord?” Although we tend to rank lying fairly low on our mental inventory of “sin seriousness”—well below murder, for example, but just above exceeding the speed limit—God is a holy and truth-filled God. All sin (including lying) would separate us eternally from him, were it not for the fact that Jesus took the full weight of our sin on himself when he went to the cross. Because of his sacrifice, our earnest repentance will always lead us back to where we belong—back into the holy, loving, merciful, forgiving arms of the Lord.

In C.S. Lewis’s final Chronicles of Narnia novel—The Last Battle—one of the characters involved in the epic final struggle between Good and evil realizes something significant: “And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.”

This was where Ananias and Sapphira went so terribly wrong. Their lie may have contained an element of truth. But it was still a lie. And in God’s Kingdom, truth is not relative.

Father, would you create in me a heart that loves truth? Would you reveal to me any areas of my life where I have embraced the kind of relative truth that is not of your Kingdom, but of the world? You are truth. May I live a life that reflects that unconditional fact. I ask all this in the name of Jesus, the Way…the Truth…and the Life.

larks

(Part 1 of 5 on the book of Acts)

“For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” — Acts 4:20

Peter and John had to be stopped. The Sadducees simply couldn’t tolerate all this talk of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. The crowd was growing! In desperation, and without knowing that Peter and John would never agree to be silenced, the temple guards arrested them and took them away to an uncertain fate.

Even though the crowd witnessed Peter and John being roughly seized and thrown in jail, about 5,000 of them came to faith anyway. Why? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the crowd to recede quietly into the shadows? To claim no allegiance to Jesus? After all, first century jails were places of loneliness, despair, and—frequently—death.

But through the passionate testimony of Peter and John, the crowd had seen a glimpse of what a new life in Christ could look like. And they were changed. Though they witnessed Peter and John’s arrest, it just reinforced what the Spirit had already revealed to be true: a life built on Jesus might be risky, but a “safe” life built on any other foundation is no life at all.

Two men were imprisoned that day. But 5,000 more rose up in their place, unashamed and unafraid.

What would we have done if we had been there? The world conditions us from a very young age to change our behavior in the face of ridicule, insult, and bullying. When our daughter’s mismatched outfit draws laughter instead of compliments, she doesn’t wear it again. When our son’s awkward athletic abilities are mocked, he stays inside while his pals play football. As adults, we’re not much different. We conform, we bite our tongues, we look the other way…all in an attempt to fit in. Yes, the world wants so desperately to make us its own.

But, as Jesus so succinctly put it, His Kingdom “is not of this world” (John 18:36). And as followers of Christ, we are called to citizenship in that beautiful, upside-down Kingdom. A Kingdom where good is brought out of evil (Genesis 50:15, Romans 8:28). Where the last will be first, and the first will be last (Matthew 19:29-30). Where persecution for Jesus’ sake is a blessing, not a curse (Matthew 5:10).

Simply put, we’re called to be profoundly, noticeably, and unwaveringly different—at work, at home, in traffic, at Applebees, on the sidelines at the game, everywhere. And we should not be surprised when our otherworldliness leads to ridicule. The Apostle Paul, who suffered intensely for the gospel, was very matter-of-fact about the treatment believers should expect: “…everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).

Ivan “Vanya” Moiseyev was one such believer who experienced all the cruel persecution the world could throw at him. In 1970, he was imprisoned, tortured and eventually killed by the communist regime in the former Soviet Union. His crime? Sharing the gospel with his fellow soldiers. Yet like Peter and John, who simply could not stop telling a lost world about Jesus, Vanya continued sharing the good news of Christ in the midst of his suffering. These words, some of Vanya’s last, show how completely he understood his citizenship in God’s Kingdom: “A lark threatened with death for singing would still continue to sing. She cannot renounce her nature. Neither can we Christians.”

Lord, make me a lark in your Kingdom, singing endlessly of Your grace and mercy. Help me to remember my true citizenship when the world tries to silence the good news I am called to share. Help me to remember that even in the midst of persecution, many will rise up and call you Lord. Jesus, I belong solely to you. May I never stop pointing the way to the sometimes-risky, always-abundant life You came to offer.