Seizing Opportunities

The Book of Acts contains around 30 gospel sermons that were preached by the apostles. The pattern that we begin to see unfold thus far in Acts concerning the gospel is that events lead to explanations. In other words, a miraculous event is followed by an explanation of the event. These explanations are not explanations of how the event occurred, but rather explanations of who caused the event to happen.

For example, following the healing of the lame man at the onset of Acts 3 the people who witnessed the miracle are astounded and amazed at what they had just seen. Instead of letting people take the miracle and interpret it however they chose to interpret it, Peter saw an opportunity (3:12) and called for everyone’s attention for the purpose of explaining what had just taken place. His explanation became the platform for his second gospel sermon in as many chapters.

Peter began by ascribing glory to Jesus Christ. Here’s what he said: “People of Israel, what is so surprising about this? And why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by our own power or godliness? For it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of our ancestors—who has brought glory to his servant Jesus by doing this” (Acts 3:12-13, NLT) Giving glory to God is a two step process. It involves refusing to accept any credit and at the same time giving full credit to Jesus.

The apostles expected God to be at work in and around their lives. When they saw God at work, they seized the opportunity and used it as a platform to share good news. Where do you see God at work? Are you taking advantage of those opportunities to share good news?

Pastors are Fatter, Sicker, & more Depressed | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

Pastors are Fatter, Sicker, & more Depressed Out of Ur Conversations for Ministry Leaders

Dangerous Assumptions

I've been thinking lately, which could be considered a dangerous thing in and of itself. Nonetheless, I've been contemplating assumptions that people like you and me make. We make assumptions all the time, and I suppose some of those assumptions are harmless enough. But sometimes our assumptions can become dangerous, leading us down paths that we would otherwise avoid. For example, many people and orgnanizations assume tomorrow will be like today.

A friend of mine once told me the story of a competition designed for meteorologists that was held at Purdue University. The plan was to crown the most accurate weather prognosticator in the nation. Over a long period of time, weather guys and gals were to submit their forecasts and at the end a winner would be crowned. As the story goes, the first winner was not a weather person, but an engineering student who used a simple formula: tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's.

This assumption deals with time and our expectations of time. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that is based on hours and days. If you don't believe me, look at your Daytimer or whatever time management tool you maintain. Those neat little lines on the page don't reveal the amount of change that is really taking place. Think of a person who loses a bunch of weight. If that person lives in your house, you may not notice the change. It's gradual, almost undetectable. Now think about that class reunion or the company picnic. You see those people once a year. If over the course of the year a person has lost a bunch of weight, you immediately notice.

We are often blind to the gradual changes that are under our noses. Some of those may be changes for the better, while others present threats and challenges that will catch us off guard if we are not anticipating them. Before you know it, those days pile up and we wake up one day and wipe the sleep from our eyes and wonder, "What just happened?"

On the Church Steps: Transformation

“He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk! Then, walking, leaping, and praising God, he went into the Temple with them” (Acts 3:8, NLT)

Compassion that moves beyond mere accommodation participates and gets involved in a person’s life. While accommodation can be beneficial, God uses our participation to bring about transformation. Reflecting on the lame man in Acts 3, it is quite obvious that the power was God’s but the hand that raised him up was Peter’s.

If you think about your own life for a minute, every significant transformation that has occurred is covered with the fingerprints of those who have walked beside you through your stuff. Those people loved you, accepted you, were patient with you, challenged you, encouraged you, helped you, prayed with you, advised you, sat silently with you, and were available to you. God is clearly the one who works the miracle of transformation. But He uses others to help in significant ways.

Is there anything more exciting than seeing lives change? Is there any greater blessing than having a hand in God's transformational work?

On the Church Steps: Response

Confronted by a need and an expectation on the door step of the Temple, the story from Acts 2 takes an interesting twist. "Peter said, 'I don't have any money for you. But I'll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!' Then Peter took the lame man by the right hand and helped him up. And as he did, the man's feet and anklebones were healed and strengthened" (Acts 3:6-7, NLT).

Rather than meet the expectation, Peter, by the power of the Holy Spirit, exceeded the expectation. I think this raises an important question: How do we respond to the expectations of those on the church steps?

Sometimes we may choose to avoid those expectations. We avoid the expectation by, proverbially speaking, entering the Temple at a different gate. Or, more commonly, we simply don't make eye contact. There's something about eye contact that acknowledges existence and reality. If we don't make eye contact, it doesn't exist in our own reality.

Other times we may choose to accomodate the expectations. This is a simple reponse that meets the need at face value. If the lame man asked for a couple of bucks and Peter and John had given a couple of bucks, no one would have condemned them for that. In fact, in our modern American culture, we would probably celebrate them. But if all they did was accomodate the need, we wouldn't be talking about it today. Commendable? Yes. Worth preserving for 2,000 years in Holy Scripture? Hardly.

Accomodating people's needs isn't all bad, and I don't want to sound disparaging. God's people, clothed with compassion, should seek to meet needs as much as possible. I am pleased to be in a church that seeks to accomodate every request that comes to our steps. Having said that, Peter and John didn't accomodate the lame man's need. Rather they chose to participate in his need.

Participating in one's need means that you roll up your sleeves and get involved with the real issues at hand. Rather than perpetuate a bad situation, they offered to invest in the lame man to the extent that his life was forever changed. They didn't meet his expectation, they exceeded it.

This is where being a Christian can potentially get messy. Granted, the Acts 3 account though powerful, is neat and clean. He couldn't walk. He was healed. And everyone lived happily ever after. But often times our experiences in participating in people's lives aren't so neat. People's lives can be pretty complicated, and the emotional and mental scars from where they are wounded don't go away so quickly. After all, not every need is visible to the eye. Nonetheless, I think Jesus calls us to participate in people's needs. Maybe not everyone's. But certainly some one's. But by God's grace and through the power he continues to make available to us through his Holy Spirit, we roll up our sleeves and do work. After all, that's what being the presence of Christ tangibly is all about.

On the Church Steps: Expectations

What do people who are proverbially on the church steps expect of those on the inside? The story of Acts 3 begins with Peter and John going to the afternoon prayer meeting at the Temple. On the steps of the Temple they encountered a man with a congenital disability, rendering him unable to stand or walk. As the story goes, this lame man was carried to the Temple steps on a daily basis where he would beg for money. To him, Peter and John were just two more guys going to church, so when he saw them he made his repeated request for alms. Picking up the story in Acts 3, the Bible says, “Peter and John looked at him intently, and Peter said, ‘Look at us!’ The lame man looked at them eagerly, expecting some money” (Acts 3:4-5, NLT).

Notice that the lame man expected the people of God to be compassionate. Alms giving was an important part of Jewish piety in the first century. The Old Testament law commanded it, and Jesus commended it (see Matthew 6:1-4). Giving to the poor was a litmus test for faithfulness, so it makes sense that the man sought out the church steps for help.

Notice also, however, that the lame man didn’t really expect the people of God to do much more than toss him a couple of bucks. The story makes it fairly clear that this was his daily practice, presumably because he never received enough to carry him for more than about 24 hours.

Do you ever wonder what people outside the church expect from the people of God who worship inside the church? I think one of the biggest challenges we have in reaching our communities with the gospel is that most of the people inside the church have been going to church most of their lives. Reconcile that with Jesus’ commission to take the gospel to people who have never been to church much, if any at all. I wonder if there is a disconnect between the people on the church steps and the people who are inside the doors? What can we do about the tension between “their” expectations and “our” assumptions? I think that’s a conversation worth having. Tomorrow I’ll post on Peter and John’s response to the expectation they were met with, and how we can respond to expectations today.

On the Church Steps

Acts 2:43 reports that the Holy Spirit was doing miraculous things through the apostles. This insight is helpful as the reader turns the page and begins reading the account of the healing of the lame man in Acts 3. If we didn’t have access to the previous text, we might be tempted to think that this story was a rare occurrence in those days following Pentecost. But I think Acts 3 should be read in light of verse 2:43, giving it more of the flavor of “…for example.”

Acts 3 is a very encouraging passage. It reminds us that the ascension of Jesus didn’t end or reduce the power of Jesus to work in people’s lives. The power that Jesus displayed during his ministry is made available to those possessed and filled with the Holy Spirit. Though Jesus was no longer visibly present in bodily form, he routinely made his presence known through the Spirit. Acts is exciting because it reveals how the apostles and the early adopters to Christianity were learning to walk in rhythm with the Spirit.

So if I had to come up with a main point or big idea for this text, it would be that the power of God was continuing to produce transformation in people’s lives, even though Jesus had ascended.

This past weekend in worship, I wanted to deal with three questions about the text. Question 1: What do people outside the church expect of “the church?” Question 2: How do people inside “the church” respond to those expectations? And finally question 3: What is God’s goal for the process. I’ll pick up the question about expectations in tomorrow’s post.