Acts continued… 

With the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter is allowed and able to heal a man who was born lame.  What an incredible amount of faith Peter must have had!  Because Peter knew it was not anything he had done to heal this man, he just had “simplicity of the heart” and complete, 100% faith that through him the Holy Spirit would reach out and heal this man.  Wow!  I yearn for the day that I have grown so much in the Lord, that the Holy Spirit will use me to perform miracles.  Not that I want the recognition by any means, I want that level of faith and trust in the Lord.  I want to be pleasing in God’s eyes and I want Him to be proud of me.  I know I was put here on this earth for a reason, for a purpose, for His purpose and grand design.  I could have died at the age of 17 and still have gone to the presence of God.  Out of the 5 people who were diagnosed with same type of leukemia I had around the same time I was diagnosed, I was the only one to survive.  I truly believe with every fiber of my being that I lived through that ordeal because I asked God to give me a testimony that would allow me to share and relate to a vast array of human experiences.  And that I could use that to be a witness for Him.  And the sacrifices he made for all of us.  So, I want to take the next step in my faith. 

Your faith is a MAJOR factor in this war.  You must have faith and understanding in that which we fight for! 

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Lately, I’ve been watching Melissa Scott teaching on the Bible.  She teaches from the original Greek text of the New Testament and shows how in the Greek language certain words have a much stronger and deeper meaning than the English translations given.  And that through understand the language and word usage, the true intent of God and the writers is fully explained.  It’s pretty cool.  Check it out at www.PatorMelissaScottcom.

 

The book of Acts was written by Luke as a sequel to the gospel of Luke.  Before Christ ascended into heaven to be with God, He charged his disciples to be witnesses for Him.  This is also when He introduced us to the Holy Spirit.  When the Holy Spirit has fallen upon a Christian, the Christian has now become a vessel for God to use for His will.  The Holy Spirit literally is God with us!  It’s an incredible feeling and a mind blowing thought!

 As Christians, God is in us and with us always as the Holy Spirit.  The strengths and abilities we possess now are not our own genetic makeup but rather the invocation of the Holy Spirit through us. 

“And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord (Yaweh) shall be saved.”  Acts 2:21

Because the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us, we can invoke the power of the saving name of the Lord for salvation from anything!  Talk about your real knight and shining armor!

It’s time to start preparing myself for battle with Satan by reading and studying the teachings from the early Christians in the New Testament.  In the New Testament after the gospels explain God, Christ, and everything, the rest of the books are teachings, stories, and the like which are to be used as guidance for developing yourself as a Christian.  It’s just like studying for any vocation like law school.  I can’t be a lawyer without concentrated basic legal understandings like basic fundamental understandings of Christ.  But now, I must study on how to apply this new understanding and privilege as a Christian to the world around me.  What now are my Christian “ethics” and “responsibilities”?  I’m going to start with the book of Acts. 

 Acts is perfectly titled because it shows the “acts” of the apostles after Christ rose from the dead and gave them their charge.  It shows how they acted as we are to act as Christians.  It also shows how through God’s power great acts can and will be accomplished.

Whoever wrote the screenplay for The Matrix wasn’t that far fetched from the reality of the war going on between God and Satan.  See, we as humans are sinful and live blindly according to the Matrix — Satan and sin.  Satan runs society.  As long as we don’t know that there is such a thing as the “Matrix” or Satan, the ruler of this realm, we cast disparaging looks and critical judgments on those who believe otherwise, Morpheus — Christians.  Like Morpheus did for Neo, someone in the life of this Christian said let me help you see the true world and reality.  So, I chose the red pill…the truth.  I read the Bible and accepted God’s Grace through His Son, Jesus Christ.  And I was set free and saw the true world for the first time.  With new eyes, I saw the horrors of this world.  

As I began to understand and acclimate myself to this new sense of reality, I became fully aware that Satan & his demons have been using me and other souls in a futile attempt to hurt and destroy God.

But I am no longer prisoner to Satan’s whim, because Jesus’s grace & sacrifice created “the red pill” the way out of Satan’s clutches and into the loving arms of My Father.  The place God had intended for me and all human kind to be.

By accepting this gift from God, we are transformed from a slave to sin into a soldier & child of righteousness for God.  Do we deserve such freedom, such grace, such redemption?  No.  For our species is soiled with the stench of sin, betrayal, & unholiness.  Since the fall of man, we have continued to breed filth, sin, and dispair.  We are not as God intended.  But because of His incredible love for us, He sent His only Son, Jesus, who is also God, Himself, to be the ultimate sacrifice to cleanse the stain of sin from our race.    It’s like washing clothes.  To get a white shirt that has been soiled and marred to the point it isn’t even white anymore back to its original glory, you can’t use filthy water with diluted soap!  No, you need the strongest form of bleach, the purest and hottest water available to restore that bad boy.  But that’s not all it takes to get a white shirt clean.  It takes some elbow grease.  It must be vigorously rubbed, worked and beaten in order to get the stains to loosen up and come out. 

We are God’ dirtest load of laundry!  Jesus is the bleach and the hot pure water.  We are loaded with sin.  We ooze it from every pore.  The only thing to wash out sin is the sinless power and nature of Christ.  He’s done the bleaching now it’s time for the wash, spin, rinse, and repeat cycles.

Hebrews 12:12 says “Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but rather, painful; afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” 

Being rid of the sin that infiltrates our lives is not going to be fun or easy.  And why should it?  Jesus was tortured and crucified.  Our natural, human, sinful reaction is going to be to bock at correction.  But, just as it says here in Hebrews, we will yield peaceable, righteous fruit because of it. 

Hebrews talks about constantly working on yourself as a Christian.  A soldier doesn’t stop working out or studying the enemy once he has finished bootcamp.  No!  He is constantly sharpening his skills and knowledge so that he is ready for battle at a moment’s notice!! 

Are you ready?  Are you a threat to Satan and his way of life?

Is your faith, armor, and knowledge strong enough in God?  Could you go to battle for God today?

Or are you just a baby…helpless and vulnerable?  Not ready for solid foods yet?  You cannot willfully be against growing into the full-fledged Christian warrior God has made you to be. 

Measure yourself.  How much of a threat are you?

“A spiritual enemy in our time is privatization of personal faith.  For too many so-called ‘committed Christians’ their relationship with Jesus is like an extramarrital affair.  It’s a secret relationship.  The love affair is real but hidden from the public eye…the tradegy for those individuals is that undisclosed personal faith eventually produces and inner sense of psychological illegitimacy.”

It’s not just a children’s song… “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”