Christ Church Daily Devotion May 7 2024

The Daily Devotion for May 7th, 2024 at Christ Church focused on a passage from Acts 1:4-8. Jesus commanded his disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit. He told them that while John baptized with water, they would soon be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The disciples asked if Jesus was going to restore the kingdom to Israel, but he said that it was not for them to know the times or dates set by the Father. However, he assured them that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they would be witnesses for him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The early Christians faced persecution, which pushed them out of Jerusalem and into other areas, spreading the word of God. God used Saul of Tarsus, who later became Paul, to accomplish this. Despite Saul's initial rage against Christianity, God used him as an instrument to fulfill his purpose. The Welcome to Christ Church's Daily Devotion for May 7th, 2024. Today we will be reading from Acts 1, verses 4-8. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command, Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Then they gathered around him and asked, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. It was by means of the persecution that arose over Stephen that these early Christians were pressed out of Jerusalem, spurted out into the areas around into Judea and Samaria, and began to preach the word, all according to the program of God. God used Saul of Tarsus even before he became a Christian to accomplish this. God works to use the very obstacles thrown in the path of Christians to advance his cause. You can picture young Saul enraged over what he regarded as a heresy, trying to stamp it out with all the energy of his flesh, entering house after house, dragging off men and women and committing them to prison. This is the rage of a tortured conscience, which tries by zealous activity to cover up its anxiety, emptiness, and hurt. Yet God uses this as an instrument to accomplish his purpose. God does two things with the rage of Saul. He forces the church out of Jerusalem and into Judea and Samaria to fulfill the divine program as he had outlined, and he makes the early church depend not upon the apostles, but upon the gifts of the Spirit distributed to everyone. For these who were scattered abroad were not the apostles. Dr. Luke is careful to tell us that. These were ordinary, plain, vanilla Christians like you and me, and yet they had gifts of the Spirit. But they would never have discovered their gifts if they had not been pushed out and put to work. So God uses this pressure to place them in circumstances where they begin to develop the gifts of evangelism, of witnessing, of help, wisdom, and knowledge, teaching, prophecy, and all of the other gifts of the Spirit that had been made available to them. Are you going through some kind of pressure today? Well, it is not punishment for our sins. Jesus took our punishment fully on the cross. The pressure, the trials, and the problems that come are no means always the result of sin in our lives. Sometimes they are, but it may be God's way of moving you, of pressuring you into a new experience, into a new understanding of his truth and of his equipment in your life and giving you a new opportunity to put it to work. Your personal worship option today. Jesus said, In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. John 16.33 Our cheer, contentment, is not with our trials, but with God who is at work, causing all things to work together for his good. Romans 8.28 Will you rest in God as he works within your difficulties to make you more like his Son?