Baptized into a changed life. If we could only remember our baptism moment by moment! What counts is your life--is it green and blossoming or is it deadwood--which means it goes on the fire?
John the Baptist:
Repent--God wills to love us into eternity. Are we able to allow such love? Repentance quits doing something--we quit trying to save ourselves, quit trying to be our own God.
Vipers--hypocrites. People around who have no intention of changing anything--dishonest.
Fire--changes what it touches. nothing keeps its identity in the fire-it is changed! Fire doesn't stay on the outside; it goes to the inside, too.
John warns that we can't consider God from a distance. Dare we go "all in"? God's got to be more than an idea.
Are you sure you know what you're asking for if you want to grow closer to God? Are you willing to risk the change that God will desire to bring in your life? It won't be under your control.
"Taken into the wild by the Spirit for a test."
1st temptation: put bread first and God second.
2nd temptation: test God's power--succumb to the excitement and adrenaline rush--looking at God as entertainment. excitement first and God second.
3rd temptation: you can have it all if you worship the devil. Single-heartedness toward devil or toward God? Temptation to bypass God to do something good. Don't we often give God credit in retrospect, having not included God in the forethought? Temptation is to be so obsessed with doing the right thing that we're willing to get rid of God in order to do it. Temptation to be impatient, to rush God's ways--which tend toward quiet, suffering, sacrificial, loving and patient, never violating human dignity.
Subtle temptations, like to be sensible about life and take care of our own basic needs and then after we're done that, take care of our relationship with God.
"Change your life. God's kingdom is here."
"I'll make a new kind of fisherman out of you."
Acts 4-6
Peter: "We have nothing to hide."
Bold men, uninhibited, fully exercising the freedom to speak out.
Humans never have the last word. God does. Period.
What if we were bold in admitting who we are: people who fall short of God's will and who are often active accomplices in plans to thwart God's will. Are we able to admit this, and refrain from self-righteousness, arrogance, etc?
God is Creator and Redeemer. God loves all creatures and will redeem and restore them to full relationship with Godself.
Peter: "Ananias, how did Satan get you to lie to the Holy Spirit and secretly keep back part of the price of the field? Before you sold it, it was yours. After you sold it, it was yours. So what what into you to pull a trick like this? You didn't lie to men but to God."
This event, with Ananias and Sapphira, takes place within the people of faith, within the proverbial body of Christ, the church, their community. They lied to God.
EP: "In the church it's not sin we need to fear, for God is practiced in dealing with fear. It's not wickedness and scandal, for the church has survived that. It's the lie of Ananias of which we need warning: 'appearing to have an external righteousness that we don't possess internally, which is none other than hypocrisy.'"
"Hoped to be touched by Peter's shadow as he walked by."
Gamaliel--a teacher of Paul, one at whose feet Stephen's sandals will be placed in chapter 7, one who cautions the authorities that they ought to leave the disciples alone. If what they're doing is only human, it will fall apart. But if it's of God, there is nothing they can do about it--and they ought not be found fighthing against God!"
Chose 7 men who would be responsible for care of the poor, so that the 12 could do the work of prayer, teaching and preaching the Word of God.
The plot against Stephen begins. He's arrested for a drummed up charge, and his end begins.
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