When we study the Bible, the living Word of God, we do so in the expectation that God will speak to us today. We may learn much of history, geography, sociology and theology from the Bible, but its primary purpose is to shape us into the image of Christ as it reveals God’s nature, purpose, plans and ways to us.
Here are some questions to ponder as we continue to study the book of Acts, based on the themes we have discussed this week:
- Where can we see God’s hand at work in our lives? So often, we fail to see God in the ordinary and the mundane, in the routines and everyday happenings, but the book of Acts reminds us that God is at work in every situation, especially (perhaps) in those situations which seem to us like disasters. Despite martyrdom, persecution and suffering, God was working to bring many people to faith and to a saving knowledge of Himself. He is still doing this!
- How do we live with a confidence in God’s sovereignty? We are living in uncertain times, with political instability and great catastrophes looming. Watching or listening to the news is an exercise in a quick route to depression, it seems, yet God is still in control. The juxtaposition between man’s evil and God’s purposes is made explicit in Acts 2:36 (‘God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’) Learning to focus on God’s sovereignty and power is the only way we can have confidence in a world which is troubled and in a future that seems so uncertain.
- How do we feel about persecution and opposition? So often, we are afraid of persecution and opposition or we believe such things are a sign of God’s displeasure. The book of Acts robustly contradicts the view that ‘everything in the garden will be rosy’ if we follow Jesus. Paul told Timothy, ‘everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (2 Tim 3:12) and what is remarkable in the book is how people responded to persecution. (‘The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.’ Acts 5:41) We need to get our theology on suffering sorted, because we cannot escape suffering in this sin-stained world. The world is not perfect and it’s not a question of trying harder, doing our best or working harder.
‘But we live in a world with wars.
It’s not like it was before.
We won’t find our happy ever after here;
There’s no such thing.’ (‘Ever After’, Aaron Shust)
Only the grace and power of God can solve the world’s problems and we need to view life through the lens of eternity if we are ever to cope with suffering and persecution in the same way that the early disciples did.
- How do we feel about our church life compared with the church life see in Acts? It’s easy to have an over-optimistic view of the early church, but there’s no doubt that it throbbed with the life of the Holy Spirit and was obedient to Jesus’s Great Commission. We need to regularly review our practices and beliefs to ensure that we are in that same position, for Jesus is unchanging (Heb 13:8) and He has poured out His Spirit on the church. We live in the same period as those early apostles, between the ascension and the Second Coming of the Lord, and therefore we can expect Him to work with the same signs and wonders that the early church saw. Our locations might be different; our methodology might change, but we need to explore Paul’s words (‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings’ 1 Cor 9:22-23) if we want to share in the blessings of the gospel as the early church did.