Sunday after Sunday God tells me something that I had not yet seen regarding sermon preparation. It's gone on for years. As I'm getting ready for the day, it is usual that "something occurs" to me that I had not even been looking for. The only way I know how to describe God saying anything to me is that He causes things to "occur" to me. But it is Him.
Today? Well, I'll not forget it. He shared with me that I ought to look at Acts 2:38 again....that because we have mistakenly pounded out the forgiveness of sins part, and ignored the Spirit reception part, we are left with a membership which obsesses over sin forgiven without caring whether there is any involvement of God in our walk. We basically want to know one main thing as a person dies...were they forgiven? We care not what they accomplished for him...sin resolve is our beat because that's the part we extract from Acts 2:38.
The message resounded. Our people got it. As we then evaluated the rest of the chapter we could see the awe-ha moments which were a great part of the church because in those days they were filled with the anticipatory Spirit of God where awe and additions were the nature of the church.
The Church of Christ is going to look more like the true church when we preach the full message of Acts 2:38. As long as we ignore the Holy Spirit our only alternative is to squeak by in life hoping we aren't lost at the moment we die.
4 comments:
Thanks for getting the message out there! It is important for the church to allow people to be who they and who they are designed to be in the eyes of our Father. When we permit the Spirit to work as it should, then there becomes a prevailing congregation. What a great advocate we have in the Spirit that testifies on our behalf that the blood of Christ is upon us.
Yes! The gifts that God gives us in Acts 2:38 is more than just forgiveness of sins, its the Spirit that indwells the man or women who says YES to the Good News of Jesus! It's the partnership in the body that Christ died and resurrected for. It's salvation! It's Hope. Grace. Joy. It's out of this world relationship with God...Jesus...Spirit!
Terry,
That is so true. We don't receive the fullness of the Spirit. We're too afraid. Then we don't get the awesome fellowship of Acts 2.42ff.
Then we can't move a person in discipline by taking away what they never enjoyed. When a person hates school and ditches school, it is not discipline to expel him for three more days. Such a school might only prove that he is right to not to want to go there.
Larry, Denverblogger
Beautiful sermon and quite the appropriate reminder that we all need! Such a wonderful job at showing us all something 'new' in a passage we've seen for years!
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