Saturday, May 20, 2017

What’s on Your Checklist?

Acts 8:1-40
(Use the link below to read the verses.)

 

 
There are a few small advantages to being slightly OCD. For instance, every morning before going to work, I go through a checklist. Wallet? Got it! Phone? Got it! Nook? Got it! Keys? Got it!

 

Each of these items are very important for my day, but none more important than my keys. That’s why when I get to work, before locking my car door, I do an abbreviated checklist. Keys? Got it! Then I know that I can get back into my car at the end of the day, as well as get into the office. Like I said, a few small advantages.

 

Keys are important. They unlock many things in our lives. The Word of God is key in unlocking hearts and opening people to God’s Spirit. Nobody knew that better than Phillip.

 

The setting of Acts 8 was a chaotic time of persecution for the followers of Christ. But little did Saul realize that he was actually playing right into God’s plan of redemption to take the Gospel to “Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth”.

 

And Saul just went wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after
house, dragging men and women off to jail. Forced to leave home base, the followers of Jesus all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they preached the Message about Jesus. Going down to a Samaritan city, Philip proclaimed the Message of the Messiah.            Acts 8:3-5 MSG

 

Phillip went from one outcast people group (the Samaritans) to another (an Ethiopian gentile) sharing the Word to the “ends of the earth”.

 

Billy Graham in his sermons, was well known for the phrase, “the Bible says”. For him, the Word of God was the key to opening the hearts of people searching for purpose in their lives. Not a magical key, like Simon the sorcerer was looking for, but a key that was “alive and active; sharper than any double edged sword”.

 

Maybe I should change my morning checklist. Wallet? Got it! Phone? Got it! Nook? Got it! Keys? Got it! Word of God? Got it!

 

What’s on your checklist?

 

 

(If God has spoken to you through this blog, please feel free to share it with others.)


 

 

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