Sometimes, when we study a topic as massive as the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need to remind ourselves why this study matters. For a moment, please think of the record we find in Acts.
We just spent several weeks looking at the ministry recorded in Acts for those 30 years from Pentecost to Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. As we remember all those events, do you ever wonder how they did it? If we are not careful, we can even get overwhelmed by what amazing things those saints did for God while struggling with tremendous obstacles.
In fact, as I read some of the more vivid parts of the New Testament again this week, some of the words that came to my mind were unbelievable, incredible, and unattainable.
Isn’t that where most of us get to after a while? Unbelievable, incredible, but alas for me, unattainable! Three words frame many people’s view of Biblical living:
UNBELIEVABLE, INCREDIBLE & UNATTAINABLE
What do I mean? Think over with me what you know about just a few of those who lived across the pages of the New Testament:
In the Gospels, the Apostle Peter was a stumbling, bumbling man who always stuck both feet, up to the ankles, into his mouth.
In fact, after the 1st Lord’s Supper, one servant girl in the dark scarred him into uttering some horrible curses and denials of Jesus.
Yet only days later, he is standing up in front of 3,000 families, facing both the murderous religious establishment of Jerusalem and their guardians, the Roman army, and was no less than totally fearless.
From that day onward, he has never been recorded as wavering again. He faces the inevitability of personal pain and certain martyrdom with serenity. See why we think he is unbelievable, incredible, and unattainable?
The Apostle Paul was beaten within an inch of death in Acts 16.
He was neglected to the point of abuse, thrown into a dark, damp, bug-infested dungeon, fastened down with iron and wood stocks, and left to grow infection, burn with fever, and perhaps die.
What was the result? He started to quote and sing aloud from the Psalms. His message was so convincing that almost everyone who heard it wanted to become a Christian! Unbelievable, incredible, and unattainable—or is it possible to live that way?
The Apostle John was alone, imprisoned, troubled, and for all he knew– forgotten by God and man as Revelation 1 opens.
He was on a baked rock in the middle of nowhere, like an ancient version of an Alcatraz or San Quentin Penitentiary.
He had already survived beatings, mobs, and jails and even lived with the scars that marked his body from the boiling oil torture the Romans had subjected him to. So, what comes out of a wasted and scarred body? He is in the Spirit, worshiping God on a Sunday, nowhere, and alone on that island prison. He gets the best look at Heaven’s beauty ever seen. Unbelievable, incredible & unattainable: or is it possible to live that way?
What do they all have in common? Only one thing: the Spirit of God is how they made it and were used so mightily.
The galaxy of unbelievable lives goes way beyond the Apostles. Countless 1st-century saints found their pathway colliding with the godless and belligerent Roman Society, whose lives ended in the sands of the arena, at the stake, or in ghastly martyrdom. Yet history records they went to their end singing, radiant with joy and serenely. Unbelievable, incredible, and unattainable: or is it possible to live that way?
THE LIST FROM CHURCH HISTORY GOES ON
(FTF-06; 141026AM)
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