September 2, 2024

The amazing New Testament book of Acts is all about ordinary people, like you and me, that did extraordinary things by the power of the Holy Spirit which confirmed the Message they were sharing with everyone who would listen; Their message was the Gospel of Jesus Christ and everywhere they proclaimed this message, God confirmed it with extraordinary happenings. 

Our conviction as the Valley Christian Church family is that God has not changed since those days.  The inspired writer of the book of Hebrews assures us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” So, Scripture itself urges us to live our lives with a reasonable expectation that the same Jesus who healed and delivered hurting people as recorded in the book of Acts through His followers will do the same thing through us today. 

We are also fully aware, through Scripture and experience, that God does not share everything with us and sometimes things don’t work out as we expected or hoped. Even the Apostles faced these kinds of often mysterious challenges, and we will read about them together as we go through this book verse by verse. But it never stopped them from continuing to proclaim their faith in Jesus and believe for God to do the miraculous, which confirmed their message. 

I think God is pleased when we adopt the same kind of mindset. We believe God for the miraculous and give Him all the credit and praise for those miracles in our public testimonies. This confirms the message about Jesus that we are sharing with others. But when things don’t work out as we believed or prayed for, we still trust that the Lord is somehow working all things together for our good. And our public testimony of trust in the Lord in the difficult circumstances ALSO confirms our message. When God’s “peace that passes understanding” is on full display in the lives of His servants who are trusting Him during their darkest days, God’s Word is “confirmed through signs following” just as powerfully. 

Paul said God’s grace was not only “sufficient”, but that God’s strength was made manifest in his weakness as well. He also communicated that these kinds of trials kept him grounded and compassionate towards the needs of others.  Through it all, the book of Acts leads us to believe that the Holy Spirit still wants to use the ordinary people of the VCC family to do His extraordinary Gospel-confirming acts. 

All that said, I’m excited to go on this journey with all of you. There is so much to learn, and I am never more pleased than when we as a church family assemble to know Jesus and make Him known! 

Pray right now:  “Father, you know me…every part of me…my strengths and my weaknesses. Once again, I give myself wholly to You. I see that, according to Your Word, you choose to use imperfect people like me to do extraordinary things in Your Name. So, like Isaiah said so many years ago, I am saying the same thing to You today, fully aware of my faults and failures, but trusting much more in your amazing Grace;  ‘Here I am, Lord…send me.’ In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.”