Concord Student Ministry

This week we talked about having a boldness for Christ.  I hope that you have been able to share among your friends the beauty of the one true Gospel.  Since we only have ten meetings to attempt at making it through the marvelous Acts of the Apostles I am not able to hit every story.  One that I am bummed that we will not be covering is the story of Stephen in 6:8-7:60.  Take some time today to read through this story and then ask yourself the questions below.

How was Stephen bold with his faith?  What made him bold in his faith?  Take a quick look at 6:10.  What did you learn about the nation of Israel through all of this?  Pray today that God will give you s Spirit of boldness to speak to your friends about the wonderful Gospel of Christ Jesus.  Pray that he will melt the hearts of stones that our friends have built up against God’s word.

Take a few minutes to watch this video.  Post your thoughts in the comments section below!

One thing I am reminded constantly as Christians is that we are under attack.  There is always opposition to the Gospel, wherever you go.  There are those who wish to persuade us, break us down, and destroy our testimony.  It doesn’t take long to go down your newsfeed on Facebook or make a quick search on google or YouTube to see how the world feels about us.  I am constantly bombarded with Facebook status’ that attempt to disprove the relationship I have with Christ.  Why do we listen to them?  How does one disprove a relationship that you have with another? How can someone disprove the real relationship that we have with Christ?  They cannot because they have not experienced Him!

As we look at the early church these next few months I am reminded of how there is power in the Holy Spirit.  Here is the thing, we are never going to have all of the answers.  We will not be able to answer some of the questions that our friends have for us.  But here is the thing, we have experienced His love, His mercy, His grace, His goodness, His peace, His faithfulness!  I think of the statement of Peter and John in Acts 4, “whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”  Wow!  I love that declaration.  Here is the truth, those who oppose the Gospel are blind to their sin.  You cannot come to Christ unless you understand your need to be saved in the first place!  Our very transformation and salvation is based on our understanding that we, as mankind, are in desperate need of a savior from our sins.  No matter how “righteous” or “good” you may seem to society you are just as bad as the next.  So we know as Christians, the world will say what it has to say, but we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard!  We are overwhelmed by our mighty Savior, our God!  We have experienced Him and we are overwhelmed!

Spend time with God today.  Read His word.  Experience His love and His mercy.  Be overwhelmed by His presence.  Ask God to give you a hunger and a desire for Him.

As we are looking through the example of the early church in ACTS these next few months I keep asking myself, “what does it look like to be a disciple of Christ?”  When we look at the lives of the disciples of Christ we see them leaving everything they have to follow Christ.  They left their families, friends, jobs, and the lives they knew to follow after Christ.  I think of all the things they had to surrender to follow Him and do His will.  There must have been something that stirred within them that gave them this desire to do so.  Which always makes me wonder in my own life, and I pray that you ask yourself this question this morning, “Am I surrendering my life to Christ?” And if you are not, “What is keeping me from that?”

When you look at your life and how you have come to follow Christ, what has changed?  What have you surrendered to Him?  Has anything changed in your life?  Looking at the lives of the disciples these men didn’t get it at first but when the Spirit came on in them in Acts 2, whoa!  These guys were not the same were they?  So ask yourself this day, “what do I need to surrender to Christ?  How can I be used by Him?”  This is not for your own merit, to make yourself look good, but because you have been radically moved by the Holy Spirit, Christ in you, and you cannot help but surrender your whole life to Him.  As Christians, we rely on the Holy Spirit to move in us, to guide and direct.  Pray for that heart today!

One thing that we talked about last night was how God never wastes a failure or a hurt.  These are the two things that I think as humans we get hung up on the most.  They are things that we will never be able to get away from.  In this fallen world we will continually encounter times of failure and times of hurt.  We all know them, we all wish we could forget them.  Today I want to focus in on our failures.

We all know those times when you fall flat on your face and ask yourself, “God, how did I get here, what am I doing!?”  Those are tough times.  You feel like you completely betrayed yourself and God; you feel worthless.  As Christians though we can lean on Christ knowing that he will heal us and restore us.  Take minute to soak in our passage from our last meeting, “¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.  ¹³Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you.” -Psalm 51:12-13 

When you find yourself amidst a failure in your life do you find yourself running to God or away from Him?  Are you able to run to Him, or do you lock yourself up in your guilt and shame?  Our response to God should be that we run to Him with open arms.  For those of us who have put our trust in Him, to follow Him, He has redeemed us from our sins by the blood of Christ for all time!  As one who is forgive there is no failure to big to keep you from His presence, He is faithful and true to forgive!   Take a look at the example of Israel in 2 Chronicles 7:14.

So for those of you who are in a time of failure, you feel worthless by God.  Know that He cares for you and He is faithful and true to restore you.  He will forgive you and will guide you.  In all of this be proactive to humble yourself before God, pray to Him, seek Him and repent (acknowledge your sin and actively turn away from it).  One thing that you will be amazed is how God will first comfort you in that time and then use that failure of yours for great things.  God will not waste it, He will use it “…for the sake of His name among all the nations…”.  Praise God for that this day!

Have you ever come across those passages in the Bible that make you think, “How in the world am I supposed to live that out?”.  As I am preparing for our series in ACTS I was taken back to a passage in Luke 14 that made me think just that.  Check it out: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  Now that is a bold statement! I sat back for a second after reading this and I think the first thing that popped in my head was, “wait, God told us to love our neighbors as ourselves!”.  But lets look a little closer at what Jesus is saying here.  Jesus is not literally saying you should hate your family and yourself, if He did then He would have contradicted Himself (cf. Matt 22:34-40).

I think what Jesus is trying to communicate to us is that our love and desire for Him should be so immense that the love we show to our family and friends would be like hatred in comparison!  Friends we serve a God who is like none other, one that desires a deep and personal relationship with us, a relationship that is more intimate than any other relationship.  Ask yourself this question today, do I love God more than anything else in this world?  Do I desire Him above all other things, to the point that it even looks like hatred in comparison.

Pray today that God will give you a passion and a deep-seated desire for Him, one that is bigger than your desire to play Call of Duty, shop at the mall, Facebook stalk that cute guy or girl, etc.  Immerse yourself in His beauty; reminding yourself of His character in goodness. For it is in Him we find our joy and pleasure satisfied.