As the Lord is completing His good work within us, he often allows us go through trials. During these trials, our perspective is limited. We don’t have the capacity to understand what God is doing unless we hear from Him. We should always expect to hear Him speak in terms of promises.
Audio: Acts23.mp3
Notes: Acts23.pdf
One of aspect of our fallen nature is the tendency toward self-righteousness. At its worst, self-righteousness makes “unrighteous others” into the enemy. This is what happened to Paul as a young man. Then he met Jesus and everything changed. His story teaches us a vital truth.
From infancy we are by nature self-centered people. Have you ever heard of a child whose first full sentence was something like, “That’s OK mom, just take your time – I’ll be fine.”?When we put our faith in Christ we receive a new nature. We are new creatures. There is now something within us that longs to put Jesus before ourselves. But those new Christ-centered creatures still live within these same self-centered old bodies. And that’s a problem. In Acts 21 we’re going to see how we can begin to address that problem.
Audio: Acts21.mp3
Notes: Acts21.pdf
The concept of Christian ministry has become so pathetically deformed that we need a biblical checklist to help us identify genuine servants of Jesus Christ and to give those servants a biblical model for their ministry. Paul’s message to the elders of Ephesus, included in Acts 20 gives us that checklist, model or plan.
Central Reflections 