Saturday 21 Dec 2013

Saturday Reading: Acts 4:1-4

Key Verse: Acts 4:4
But many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.

Devotion:
When God wants people to stop and take notice He is going to make sure that people do exactly that; stop and take notice! The religious leaders at the time were struggling with the fact that Christ was being taught in the temples; their very jobs were being undermined by people just telling the truth! And when people tell the truth, others will hear that truth and know that it is true.

It was amazing that so many people got to hear the gospel in these few days and that many of them realised that this was the truth being told. They believed the words and came to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. This meant a bit of a population explosion happening in the church as thousands of people believed in Jesus and the real church instead of continuing to follow the religious leaders who were promoting themselves and their religious ways.

God wants us to hear the take in the truth because it will release us from the lives we are trapped within. Christ had taught these fishermen to be fishers of men; they took the bait out (which was the gospel truth) and cast it into the sea of people. Just as Jesus had told them that the harvest was ready, they found out that people wanted to hear the truth and needed to hear it quickly.

We may look at this number of people coming to know Christ as extraordinary, but when we see what Christ was doing in the few years that He taught the masses, we can look at these numbers and realise that they were not extraordinary in God’s eyes. Jesus was the one who fed 5000 men with someone’s lunch! These sorts of numbers are of no measure according to God other than they are being saved from their sinful lives. Each one of us that is saved is as important to Him as the heavens sing as each soul is saved. We have a God that cares about each individual and yet cares for so many people!

Points to Ponder:
Are you limiting God’s effectiveness?

Do you trust God to deliver?