I'm LOVING the puns today. AND THE ALL CAPS... so just be aware.
So I got through 1 and 2 Timothy and they were both awesome (obviously cause they're in the Bible), but when I finished I knew I wanted to take on a bigger book, one that I didn't really remember all that well (so the Gospels were out of the question) and preferable New Testament... and when I looked through I realized that only one book fit that criteria, and so I opened up the book of Acts.
I've been preparing for Winter Camp all this week, and this year I was asked to lead a seminar type discussion that students could elect to attend. So I've been wondering what I'd talk about and thinking about what students wanted to hear about and finally I just asked me students. Luckily Omar spoke up with the idea of Miracles... but unluckily that is also a topic I don't know much about. Not one to back down from a challenge I gladly accepted assuming that it'd all work out in the end.
When I opened up the book of Acts it reminded me that:
1. The church is founded on the greatest miracle of all, Christ raising from the dead.
2. When the church started it waited for a miracle. They went to the upper room, replaced Judas, and then waited for the holy spirit to show them something miraculous. And of course it did. They all started speaking in tongues. The first outreach that the Christian church did was a miracle.
3. The next thing they did was a miracle. Peter and John see a man laying outside of the Beautiful Gate and they tell him to walk, and he does!
When I thought about how much the miraculous motivates ALL of the actions of the early church and made me realize just how much I'd ignored it.
Can a church exist with out the miraculous?
As more and more people talk about the early church and it's original intention how come we aren't seeing more and more people experiencing the miraculous?
Acts 3:6 "But Peter said, 'I have no silver or gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!'"
Our churches feed many people with hard work and with generous spirits, and I couldn't be more thankful for that, but do we heal people? I love how Peter says "but what I do have I give to you." and immediately does the miraculous.
Do we have miracles?
So I got through 1 and 2 Timothy and they were both awesome (obviously cause they're in the Bible), but when I finished I knew I wanted to take on a bigger book, one that I didn't really remember all that well (so the Gospels were out of the question) and preferable New Testament... and when I looked through I realized that only one book fit that criteria, and so I opened up the book of Acts.
I've been preparing for Winter Camp all this week, and this year I was asked to lead a seminar type discussion that students could elect to attend. So I've been wondering what I'd talk about and thinking about what students wanted to hear about and finally I just asked me students. Luckily Omar spoke up with the idea of Miracles... but unluckily that is also a topic I don't know much about. Not one to back down from a challenge I gladly accepted assuming that it'd all work out in the end.
When I opened up the book of Acts it reminded me that:
1. The church is founded on the greatest miracle of all, Christ raising from the dead.
2. When the church started it waited for a miracle. They went to the upper room, replaced Judas, and then waited for the holy spirit to show them something miraculous. And of course it did. They all started speaking in tongues. The first outreach that the Christian church did was a miracle.
3. The next thing they did was a miracle. Peter and John see a man laying outside of the Beautiful Gate and they tell him to walk, and he does!
When I thought about how much the miraculous motivates ALL of the actions of the early church and made me realize just how much I'd ignored it.
Can a church exist with out the miraculous?
As more and more people talk about the early church and it's original intention how come we aren't seeing more and more people experiencing the miraculous?
Acts 3:6 "But Peter said, 'I have no silver or gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!'"
Our churches feed many people with hard work and with generous spirits, and I couldn't be more thankful for that, but do we heal people? I love how Peter says "but what I do have I give to you." and immediately does the miraculous.
Do we have miracles?
"The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one's own thinking cannot be a merely natural event, and that therefore something other than Nature exists." - C.S. Lewis - Miracles. (I'm sure throughout this book I'll find other quotes more directly applicable but this is the best i've come across so far)
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