- The disciples who were beginning the Early Church were filled with joy (referenced Luke 24:52) as they gathered together. Despite the social and "spiritual" unrest at the time, they had joy.
- The disciples were humble. Scripture doesn't say that point blank but Jeremy pointed out that they all gathered together. Remember, Peter had just recently denied Christ 3 times and Thomas had doubted His resurrection. Instead of allowing pride to take over and point fingers at each other's faults, they gathered together.
- The disciples prayed. "They all joined together constantly in prayer...(14)" Jeremy's point is that we need to be praying and we don't pray enough.
Some other side note points...
- Activity (in church) does not equal intimacy (with Christ)! He noted there are a lot of great churches that offer really great activities and even outreach ministries but if the people aren't JOYFUL, HUMBLE, and PRAYING the churches and those activities are spiritual dead. To go along those same lines...
- Busy-ness does not equal holiness! We keep ourselves busy, busy, busy but are we keeping ourselves holy and set apart from the world?
In verse 8 of Acts 1 it says this, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." Jeremy said the word witnesses here in the original language is actually martyrs. WOW! Are you willing to truly be a martyr for Christ? I fear our time is coming here in America.
I was reading for my quiet time recently and really found this to be interesting. I have met people who believe in no heaven and hell or that God couldn't possibly exclude people from heaven because He's supposed to be a loving and merciful God. Also some people think the Bible is contradictory and partly because in the Old Testament many times you read about God pouring out his wrath on the Israelites yet a few verses later He is pouring out His mercy. The authors of the book I was reading (Meet the Bible by Philip Yancy and Brenda Quinn) make this point. God is like water. He is life giving! We humans are like oil. We can really make a mess of things. Interesting methaphor/analogy given the current situation with the oil spill in the gulf. Oil and water can be put together but they remain separate. Our sin keeps us separated from God because He is holy, just, and perfect. He loves us and wants to take us in but He can't because He is so good and we are so bad. However, because He loves us so much He gave us His son Jesus who acts like the soap in the relationship. Soap reacts with oil and water making the two somehow work together in order to become clean. I admit I am doing a horrible job of explaining this. God knew we would not be able to "keep the law" because of our sinful nature. The Israelites proved that time and time again. So, He had a plan for all of us to have the opportunity to come to Him. The message and God's love for us is really that simple. We are the ones who twist it all up and make it complicated and difficult to accept. Anyhow, food for thought!
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