Devotionary

Latest Episodes:

Ep 412 – Acts 12:1-11 Feb 01, 2018

Show notes

The Book of Acts is filled with stories of all kinds, from miraculous, never-before-seen events that boggle the mind and stretch the limits of our beliefs, to extremely dark and sinister scenes where the darkness of man's heart becomes too readily apparent. We have seen Stephen martyred and the disciples flogged. We have heard of Saul's pre-conversion efforts to eradicate the church by arresting and executing Christians. And now, in Acts 12:1-11, we read of Herod's beheading of the apostle John, the brother of James. Too say that things were heating up would be a gross understatement. The church was coming under increasing attack as the enemy intensified his efforts to eradicate the followers of Jesus and put to an end any hopes of the gospel of ever reaching the ends of the earth. This was war, spiritual war, but the casualties were more than spiritual in nature. There were people dying for their faith. Peter would end up, once again, imprisoned for being a follower of Jesus and a messenger of the gospel. But as poorly as things seemed to be going for the church, Luke's account provides us with a vivid and much-needed reminder that our God is always in control. In these verses, we will see Him thwart the plans of King Herod and restore to His church, not only their leader, but their confidence in their God. He was far from done. And the same could be said for Peter.

Ep 411 – Acts 11:19-30 Jan 31, 2018

Show notes

So far, we've seen Peter and John get arrested and flogged, Ananias and Sapphira be struck dead, Stephen end up stoned to death, and the church get scattered because of intensified persecution. Now, we're going to hear about a famine in the land. Not exactly a walk in the park. But through it all, we have also seen God's hand at work, spreading the gospel and growing His church. It's so easy to look at the less-than-pleasant circumstances of life and assume that God is nowhere to be seen. We can not only doubt His presence, but question His love and care for us. But if there is one consistent theme in the Book of Acts, it is that God is at work, all the time and in every situation, no matter how grim or unpleasant they may appear. In Acts 11:19-30, we are going to see the method to God's seeming madness as He introduces His chosen instrument, Saul, to the city of Antioch. God had divinely orchestrated the friendship between Barnabas and Saul some years earlier and neither knew what He had in store for them in the days that lie ahead. But they would find out. These two men would become close friends and intimate partners in the mission of taking the gospel to the Gentiles. And we will see that God's choice of Saul had been anything but a fluke. He was well equipped and had been powerfully prepared by God during the nine years since his conversion. God's plan had been perfect and His timing, spot on.

Ep 410 – Acts 11:4-18 Jan 30, 2018

Show notes

Have you ever purposefully made a decision to stand in God's way? Probably not. Most people in their right mind and who have even a rudimentary idea of who God is, would think twice before standing up to Him. Or would they? The truth is, we all do it. Not in a shake-your-fist-in-the-face-of-God kind of way, but in our own subtle version of correcting God when we think He's failed to do what we were expecting. In Acts 11:4-18, Paul is going to share his own personal version of all that had happened in Caesarea. He's going to recount everything from his disturbing vision and the visit of the three men sent by Cornelius, to his sharing of the gospel and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon those who were in the house. And Peter makes it fairly clear that he had not been willing to oppose what God had been doing. He had no right to stand against what God had decided to do. After all, God was in charge, not Peter. Yet, the crowd to whom Peter was telling this story was made up of some Jewish Christians who were having a difficult time with what God had done in Caesarea. He had done the unthinkable. He had poured out His Spirit upon Gentiles and not even ones who had become adherents of the Jewish faith. These had not been proselytes to Judaism, but full-fledged, uncircumcised Gentile pagans. But for Peter, those facts no longer mattered. He knew better than to oppose what God had approved.

Ep 409 – Acts 10:44-11:3 Jan 29, 2018

Show notes

If there's one thing most of us as believers have learned, it's that God doesn't always do things the way we expect or want. He seems to have a mind of His own and a tendency to do things the way He thinks best, whether we approve or not. And in Acts 10:44-11:3, we are going to see God surprising Peter and the Jewish believers in the church with His treatment of the Gentiles who came to faith in the home of Cornelius. God poured out His Spirit. Upon their belief in the saving work of Jesus Christ, each of the Gentiles received the same anointing of the Spirit of God as the 120 disciples had received on the day of Pentecost. They even spoke in foreign languages. This had not been what Peter had expected and, as we will see, it was most certainly not what the Jewish believers back in Jerusalem had anticipated. God was not doing things according to their preconceived notions of protocol. These Gentiles were received the baptism of the Spirit, as well as water baptism, and they hadn't even been required to be circumcised. This was unacceptable. It wasn't kosher, so to speak. But God was doing things His way. He wasn't taking input or seeking permission. He wasn't operating according to their will, but in keeping with His divine, totally flawless, and completely just and sovereign will. They were amazed, but also appalled. They were shocked and stunned that God was operating outside the box in which they had placed Him. And this was just the beginning.

Ep 408 – Acts 10:17-43 Jan 28, 2018

Show notes

Today, we're covering a longer-than-normal section of Scripture: Acts 1017-43. It involves the sequence of events that followed Peter's rather bizarre vision of the sheet filled with unclean animals. Now, God is going to provide Peter with a real-life application of what that vision had meant. Peter is invited to the home of Cornelius in Caesarea, where he will be given an opportunity to treat that which he had long held in disdain: Gentiles, with respect, and extend to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. God was opening the doors to the unclean and the unworthy. But those descriptions were not to be reserved for just Gentiles. The truth of the matter was that all men and women stand before God as unclean and unworthy. All our best deeds done with the best of intentions are nothing but filthy rags in God's eyes. A right standing with God is not based on human effort or any form of earned merit. God had extended His grace to Peter and the rest of the apostles. Now He was going to extend it to Cornelius and his household. The gospel was good news to all people, not just to the Jews. Jesus was the Savior of all mankind, not just the people of Israel. Salvation was a free gift, offered by God to any who would accept it, not to those who had somehow earned or inherited it. Peter's dream had initially been a nightmare to him, but now he was going to see that God's vision for the redemption of mankind was all-encompassing and non-discriminatory.

Ep 407 – Acts 10:1-16 Jan 27, 2018

Show notes

Everybody has an opinion. It's human nature. Even when it comes to spiritual matters. And Peter was no different. In today episode, based on Acts 10:1-16, we have an interesting tale of two visions. One is given to a Roman names Cornelius. The other is given to Peter. And they both came from God Himself. The purpose of these two visions was to prepare Peter and the other apostles for a major shift in outreach that God was about to bring about. Until this point in the story, the furthest the gospel had spread outside the environs of Jerusalem and beyond the ethnic borders of Judaism, had been to Samaria. The people there were actually part-Jewish and worshipers of Yahweh. But other than Hellenistic or Greek-speaking Jews who had come to faith in Jesus, there were really no purely Gentile members of the newly founded church of Jesus Christ. But all that was about to change. God was preparing to open up the door to let the gospel out and the Gentiles in. But first he had to prepare one of the leading apostles in the church for what was about to happen. And God chose to do it through the means of a vision. A very strange and disturbing vision – at least, from Peter's perspective. This feisty, opinionated fisherman was going to have his world rocked and his paradigm shifted in a major way. Any preconceived notion he had as to how things should be was about to get turned on its head. The unclean was going to become clean. The uncommon was about to be declared common by God. The outsiders were going to suddenly find themselves included. Much to Peter's surprise.

Ep 406 – Acts 9:32-43 Jan 26, 2018

Show notes

Rise and walk. Be healed. Take up your bed and walk. Over and over again in the Book of Acts, we encounter these scenes where spectacular things are taking place. Miracles are being performed. Blind people are receiving their eyesight back. People who've never been able to walk are suddenly given the capacity to walk, run, and dance. The blind receive their sight. The sick are made well. Those who are demon-possessed are set free. But as incredible as each and every one of these stories may be, they pale in comparison to the spiritual healing so many people received at the hands of the apostles. And it's likely that Luke has not provided us with an exhaustive list of miraculous healings. There were probably others that we don't know about. And there were most likely many people who never received healing. They went away unchanged, having never met the disciples face-to-face. The thing we have to realize is that the miracles of healing performed by the disciples were meant to validate their ministries. Their ability to heal was living proof that they had been sent by God and were operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. But the miracles had another purpose. They also provided a foreshadowing or representation of the moral, spiritual and ethical change taking place in the lives of the people. While only some were healed from physical lameness, everyone suffered from the spiritual version. They were also spiritually blind and deaf. They couldn't see or hear the truth. The real mission of the apostles was not to bring physical healing to everyone, but to let the world know spiritual healing was available to all who would accept it.

Ep 405 – Acts 9:26-31 Jan 25, 2018

Show notes

Luke appears to be a matter-of-fact, no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase kind of a guy. In chronicling the history of the early church, he provides us with a tremendous amount of details, from its rather bizarre beginnings in that upper room in Jerusalem to its eventual spread to the ends of the earth. But Luke doesn't include everything. At times, he seems to purposefully leave out some details that he deems unnecessary or superfluous. And today, we're going to look at one such case. In Acts 9:26-31, Luke appears to have Saul going straight from Damascus to Jerusalem, where he would interface with the apostles. But we know from Saul's own accounts of that period of his life, there was a significant time gap between his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and his eventual visit to Jerusalem. By pieicing together the timeline of events, we get a better understanding of what God was doing to prepare Saul for the task assigned to him by Jesus. There was a period of preparation necessary. While Saul was a zealous individual with a superb education and unprecedented knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, he was not yet ready to act as God's hand-picked ambassador of the good news to the Gentiles. There were lessons to be learned. There was spiritual formation required. And there was the need for time, so that the church could adjust to the idea of their former persecutor becoming one of the greatest proponents of the gospel the world has ever known.

Ep 404 – Acts 9:19-25 Jan 24, 2018

Show notes

We love stories of life change. As long as their positive. And there is no story quite like that of Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the Christian faith turned proclaimer of the good news of Jesus Christ. In Acts 9:19-25, Luke continues his account of Saul's dramatic conversion story, providing Theophilus, the one to whom the Book of Acts was originally written, with a synopsis of this man's incredible encounter with the risen Christ and all that happened afterwards. But we have to supplement Luke's more abbreviated version of the story with input from Saul himself, provided many years later. It seems that Saul, better known to us as Paul, never tired of recalling and retelling his dramatic salvation story, because it was a constant reminder to him of the grace, mercy and sovereignty of God. Paul knew better than anyone else just how radical the transformation in his life had been. He knew he had been damaged goods and completely undeserving of God's grace. In fact, he would say that, when it came to sinners, he was the worst of them all. While he would constantly defend the validity of his apostleship, he would also declare himself to be "the least of the apostles" and "unworthy to be called an apostle" – all because he had persecuted the church of God. He would also refer to himself as the least of all the saints. And yet, he knew that he had been given the grace of God to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He was a changed man. And it was a change that only God could have brought about.

Ep 403 – Acts 9:10-19 Jan 23, 2018

Show notes

The conversion of Saul of Tarsus. It's a relatively well-known story among Christians. After all, it's not every day that you hear about a man whose full-time job was that of a bounty hunter, rounding up Christians and sentencing them to either prison or death. And this man suddenly gets transformed into one of the greatest evangelists for the Christian faith the world has ever known. We love the story of Paul because it is an undeniable picture of God's amazing grace and unquestionable sovereignty over everything and everyone. In Acts 9:10-19, Luke provides us with the details of what happened after Saul was struck blind by the resurrected Christ somewhere along the road to Damascus. God arranged for a disciple named Ananias to meet Saul in Damascus and not only restore his sight, but play a part in God's commissioning of Saul as His servant. This is a fantastic story filled with incredible plot twists and plenty of head-scratching decisions made by God. It is difficult to hear of Saul's conversion and not wonder, "Why him?" Weren't there better qualified and less controversial men God could have chosen? But this is where we have to set aside our human logic and rationally thinking minds, and try to grasp the unimaginable, unfathomable ways of God. Even though we know how the story of Saul ends, we still find his salvation difficult to understand. Just imagine how Ananias felt.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected