I recently started reading the book of Acts for my devotionals.
I’ve had a renewed interest in the early church and also my brother’s new church recently went over Acts as their Bible study.

The Book of Acts fascinates me. On top of that Petere is my favorite disciple, only because I feel like I have a lot in common with him, particularly having our feet in our mouth. Peter always seemed to say stuff without putting thought into it, something I do too many times.

But from the start of the book, you can already sense that the foot-in-mouth-bumbling-Peter is different.

The first few chapters deal with Peter addressing the crowd in the name of Jesus. I mean here is the disciple who “called down curses on himself” while denying that he was knew Jesus. He was afraid to admit his relationship with Jesus to a servant girl, and now in Acts, Peter speaks boldy and wisely.

It just shows how amazing and powerful God’s love is. Peter is completely a new creation, the old has gone and has been replaced with Peter the Apostle.

The good news is that if God can do this through Peter, God can do it through anyone.

So let the Spirit move you in ways you never dreamed before.
I pray that throughout 2009, we will allow (and invite) the Spirit to lead us into (holy) trouble. Because throughout history, when the word was preached with power of the Spirit, it always caused problems and brought the messenger trouble. That’s because our faith, our God and our love is counter-cultural.

Let the Spirit empower us all and I urge all of us to not only receive blessing, but that we will be a blessing to all the nations.