Victory in silence..
Victory can sometimes be silent.
A lot of people these days refer to victory as the loud noise of fulfillment. Oftentimes, we're unable to see the things behind the success of the noise. Some people may have sacrificed their pride in hope of bringing fulfillment to one's success. Being humble, that is.
How funny it is that reality beats what's supposed-to-be. People are really ambitious, i can see. And it is so sad that not few are willing to stepped on someone's pride and dignity to reach their goals. Not few took away someone's self-esteem to boast themselves.
I know the feeling, i've once lost my self-esteem for someone else's goal.
Yes, I get to write about Jesus in my English class. :)
Lamentation Before Celebration
It seems that American Christians are all about celebration. In fact, some churches have intentionally chosen the adjective “celebratory” to describe their worship style. Everything has to be upbeat, positive, encouraging. After all, life itself is discouraging, depressing, and difficult enough; shouldn’t church be uplifting?
The Bible does indeed encourage us to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4:4). However, true celebration takes into account the gravity of mourning and suffering. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that lamentation is good for us: “The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure” (Ecc. 7:4). And the Apostle Peter reminds us that suffering is crucial to proper rejoicing: “To the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation” (1 Peter 4:13). To put it another way: Redemption and Consummation ring hollow without a realistic assessment of the Fall.
For example: We want to celebrate exuberantly on Easter Sunday. To that end, we gather first for a somber and melancholy observance of Good Friday. Our Good Friday worship gathering will indeed be worshipful, just not in a celebratory way. We’ll reflect on the gravity of sin, the seriousness of God’s wrath, and the dark reality of that beautiful, scandalous night.
So, do not attempt to muster up a joyful spirit on Easter Sunday, or any time for that matter without embracing the fear, darkness, and lamentation of life in general.
The Centralization Of Authority: Part 1
Let's start at the beginning of Acts 5.. The church has been growing super fast, people were being healed, the gospel was spreading. Then God decides to freak everyone out by killing someone who gave money to the church.
I should be clear here, Ananias and Sapphira conspired together to gain favor in the fledgling church by appearing spiritual in an act of giving. They decided together to sell some land and give part of the money to the apostles and make seem as though they had given all the money they received. Peter being full of the Spirit knew they were attempting to deceive the body of believers and, more importantly, God himself. Peter called them out and both were struck dead.
This strikes fear in my own life because I feel I've committed equally, if not worse, sins against God my savior. God clearly is the author of life and is sovereign over all, so he can at any point exact his wrath or demonstrate his mercy. That said, I believe God used this event as an example rather than a norm to establish and centralize the leadership of the early church and further build the church's foundation. Jesus says to Peter and the rest of the twelve that on them he'll build his church. If Ananias and Sapphira were able to get away with this, you'd have seen enemies of the church weasel their way into leadership and disintegrate its foundation and credibility.
What God did worked. People were hesitant to join the believers out of fear, but still received the gospel in droves. The Sanhedrin, naturally, became jealous and sought to prevent the apostles from preaching more. A respected leader wisely prevented them from carrying out any capital punishment on the apostles by arguing that if these men were not aided by God himself their movement would die. God in his wisdom used the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira to ensure that the movement would in fact be completely led by his Spirit.
As we'll see later on in Acts, this is one of many events that God used to ensure the fidelity of this new movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment