The Acts of the Apostles

Our church has chosen Acts as our study for the fall. Our covenant groups will be going through it, and Jim Birchfield will be going through it on Wednesday nights in our large-group adult Bible study. He is also preaching tonight using the start of Acts as his text.

I have been going through it, too, and have been seeing the power there for salvation. The message of salvation there is not really "the 4 spiritual laws", is it? Nor is it the typical understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit or of the Church that we see in the confessions of reformed theology and in our practice in our denominations and congregations.

We have been given intimacy with a powerful triune God, are instruments in proclaiming the message of salvation, and are each a part of a powerful community. That should be reflected in our community, in our private and corporate passions and enthusiams, and in our individual faithfulness in the things that we're called to that don't touch anything passionate within us, but are just a required part of life.

I have a lot more to type here (about Jesus' time with us before the resurrection, about Ananias and Saphira, about Paul's faithfulness after God's dramatic action in his life, about women in the early church . . .) and am in a rare time of actual physical illness, where I am taking an antibiotic, running a fever, and let my kids survive the morning largely unsupervised while I slept until noon. Now I have to decide whether to keep my commitments for the afternoon and evening or to cancel them . . .

So, much more later this week, when I'm back to functional!