Acts 12

This chapter opens with Herod killing James the brother of John and then imprisoning Peter. The church prayed earnestly for him, and miraculously he escaped one night with the aid of an angel. Sounds a bit too incredible to be real, right? I don't know, we see lots of miracles in the Scriptures. Too bad God doesn't move like that today, eh?

But actually, this account sounds a lot like the stories of Brother Yun, an intensely persecuted Chinese house church leader, as recorded in his autobiography The Heavenly Man. (If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.) It reminds me that God is alive and active in our world today, as much as he was in the days of the early church. True, in this country we don't often see God working in such miraculous ways, but I think that's mostly because we don't need or expect him to.

Tonight, I'm praising God for his power and his passion for his people. And I'm praying that I would learn to truly believe and trust him to work miraculously in my life.

Acts 11

In the beginning of this chapter, Peter is being criticized for interacting with uncircumcized men, so he recounts the vision he'd had (in chapter 10) and how the Lord led him to share the Good News with the Gentiles. After they heard the Good News, many believed and received the Holy Spirit, which surprised the Jews. At the end of his explanation, Peter reasons: "If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?" (Acts 11:17). That pretty much silenced all the grumbling, and everyone glorified God.

Exactly: If God decides to work in a certain way, however surprising we may find it, who are we to stand in the way of that? Beautiful.

Acts 10

This is kind of a hard chapter for me. I mean, it's pretty awesome how God spoke to both Peter and Cornelius to get them ready to meet and learn from one another, but I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the Jews here, and it's tough. All their lives they've been told they can't associate with non-Jews, and then all of a sudden that changes? And so then I'm thinking about all the other ways people today claim that God's Word no longer applies to us: like how women can preach now, and homosexuality is o.k., and divorce is just a part of life. And it's such a struggle for me to justify why I believe that some of God's laws no longer apply while other do.

In this chapter, God clearly announces a change. With other issues, I think God's plan and desire clearly has NOT changed, even if our culture has, and those are the hardest things to discuss with non-believers or even believers who hold a different viewpoint on a very controversial topic. And then there are those areas where I'm just not sure what I think God wants us to do with His Word today.

In Acts 10:34-43, Peter shares the Good News with the Gentiles. He says: "God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what it right is acceptable to him." This is a good reminder that while God welcomes believers from every background, he still requires that we all "do what is right." We all come to him as sinners, but if our faith is real and we are truly seeking after Him, He will change us.

I guess right now I'm just praying that the Holy Spirit would to help me better understand God's Word and how it applies to our lives in our world today.