In Acts 8:26-40, Philip the Evangelist was in the midst of revival in Samaria where people were coming to know Jesus as Messiah and many of those were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Signs and wonders were happening. Healings and conversions and rejoicing in the Lord was the talk in the Samaritan streets. In the midst of this great revival, the angel of the Lord told Philip to go to the desert road on the southern side of Jerusalem.

I was sitting in a ministry conference workshop and the Lord spoke. He told me to get up in the middle of this workshop and go and pray for the workshop leader. I began to question what the Lord was asking me to do. Why would I interrupt the workshop? There was no real reason to go up and pray for this woman? This can’t be what God is asking me to do? After all there were more than 100 people listening and learning in this large conference setting, I told myself.

In Genesis 17, God told Abraham that his wife Sara, ninety-years old, was going to bear a son to be named Isaac. God promised that he would establish a covenant with Isaac and his descendants, making them a great people, and a lineage of kings. Isaac was born, and some years later God instructed Abraham to take him to the region of Moriah and to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. In other words, Abraham was to kill his son, the son that he loved, and burn his body as an offering to the Lord.

Sheep… You have probably heard the comparisons as someone preached from one of the many texts likening the Church to a flock of sheep. Sheep are not very smart. Sheep are helpless. Sheep stink. Sheep make a mess. Not very flattering images, but especially offensive to people who live in a culture where sheep are prevalent. These descriptions may not be very gratifying, but as they are biblical, they are meant for our understanding, edification and even correction. Just because something offends, it should not be avoided.

Why do some people make professions of faith, yet are clearly not saved? Could it be that a poor methodology has contributed to making false converts? I have been in many churches where the “sinner’s prayer” was recited at the end of the sermon. “Do you want to be saved? Then repeat after me…” Usually every head was bowed and every eye was closed (except for those of us who were peeking around to see needed to get saved). The words were repeated very casually, sometimes accompanied by yawns, or the sounds of chewing gum. Then a declaration was made. “If you just prayed this prayer, congratulations. You are saved.”

As we travel through this world, pilgrims just passing through, we need to be careful as to what we carry with us. When we come to Christ, our big bags are packed, weighed down with what the Apostle Paul calls the “old self” (Ephesians 4:22). Because the good news has been preached to us, a good Word that endures forever (1 Peter 1:25), we no longer have to carry that suitcase. In fact, we are to cast it off, to lay it aside, literally to put it away. The stuff we carry when we come to Christ must be set aside to make room for what we need to take with us—the Word of God. “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).

Before the church there was the family. Before the Temple in Jerusalem, before the Tabernacle in the wilderness, there was the family. Have you ever wondered what the Old Testament saints did to worship the Lord before there was a formal time and place to do so? Have you ever realized that in the early days of the New Testament church, there were no church buildings? That initially there were no set times for gathering together? In both Old and New Testaments, worship was centered around the family and took place in the home.

What hinders us from knowing the great and unsearchable things of God? Plain and simple…Sin. Sin keeps us from God’s best for us. Sin keeps our eyes closed to seeing the things of God and our ears shut to hearing his voice. The fear of the Lord has been lost in daily idolatries, harlotries and backslidings. (Jeremiah 5:21-22)

Sincere, brotherly love is a mark of discipleship. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Jesus spoke these words on the night of His betrayal. It would be just a short time later, after His death, resurrection, and ascension that the church would be established. Christ’s church was not to be known by special rites or ceremonies. It was not to be marked only by religious rituals, and public pronouncements. The church is to be known, identified, by a display of sincere, brotherly love.

God alone is building this church. It is by His grace alone that it exists. There is no one person who can or will receive the glory because we have just been floating down the river. The water, the current, the movement, the opportunities all are due to the mercy and kindness of the Lord.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision in the temple of God that caused him to see his frailty before God. When he encountered the Lord’s presence, the Bible says that he came “undone.” Isaiah saw his sinfulness when coming face to face with God! So much so that it caused him to pronounce it. In the first few verses of Isaiah 6 you can catch a glimpse of the glory and greatness of God and His power to forgive and renew.

Prejudice (pre-judging) is an attack on the deity of God, and thus is a sin against God and not just our fellow man. Regardless of social state, financial resources, background, skin color, or any other criteria, every human has been created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Ethnicity or nation of origin may not be the same, but we are all of one race—the human race. Every man, woman, boy and girl bears the image of the Creator. And God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever put their trust in Him, would not perish, but would receive everlasting life (John 3:16).