Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

Here we go again! We just read how an angel told Philip to walk down a particular road and then the Holy Spirit pointed out an Ethiopian official he was to lead to Christ. Now we hear the Lord speak to a disciple named Ananias and tell him to go to a certain address and lay hands on Saul of Tarsus. Both situations are “divine appointments.” In both, Jesus sends His disciple after someone He has ta...

Three days after wanting to kill the disciples of Jesus Christ, Paul is a completely different man. Sure, he has a lot to learn, and almost nobody trusts him yet. When he tries to meet with other believers they suspect he’s just pretending so he can gather names and come back later with the police. But he is different. Totally different. And for the next three decades he will live a life that is c...

Not every human heart is ready to receive Jesus Christ. Different people are at different places in their spiritual journey. Some aren’t willing to hear the gospel, but others are and God knows where that person is every moment of the day. You and I can’t tell what’s going on inside another person’s heart, especially by merely looking at their outward appearance. But God knows the secret thoughts...

How many times have you been confronted with someone who was ill or troubled and thought to yourself, “We need to find somebody to pray for this person!” The individual in front of you needed a touch of God’s power and you wondered who you knew who could pray with real authority…you know, someone who actually has power and believes in miracles. Those kind of people! And there are such people, aren...

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He is kind and compassionate. When He began His ministry He introduced Himself this way:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord” (Lk 4:18, 19; Isa 61...

People need a God who actually does something. We live in a world filled with varieties of invented gods and philosophies. They only exist because of someone’s imagination. They make great claims but provide no proof they exist. We’re told to trust them, and after we die it will all become real. How many different theories about life and death have you heard? Undoubtedly, the answer is, so many (a...

What had been an amazingly joyful season for the church in Jerusalem is suddenly thrown into turmoil. Stephen is publicly stoned and the temple authorities feel they now have enough popular support to send soldiers into the city to hunt down believers from house to house, to put them in prison and then to beat and execute them (Ac 22:4, 5, 19, 20; 26:9-11). The effect of this violence was to scatt...

Luke wrote the history of the early church but he wasn’t personally present at these events until chapter 16 (Ac 16:10). To gather all this information he had to interview eyewitnesses, ask them pointed questions to draw out their memories, and then carefully write down what they told him. Someone had to tell him about the martyrdom of Stephen; someone who was there and heard and saw what happened...

How many of us are facing a problem that’s still there because we didn’t address it? It’s not a new problem, it’s an old problem that didn’t go away. Most of us tend to avoid confronting issues hoping matters will resolve themselves with the passing of time, but if we’re honest with ourselves we’d have to admit that seldom happens. Things that are broken don’t fix themselves, projects don’t move f...

It wasn’t just what he said, it was who said it. Very few of the dignitaries in that room could have stopped that lynch-mob. It took a special voice, at the right time, and a lot of courage to stand and rebuke the elders of Israel. God elevates His people to positions of leadership so He can speak through us at critical moments. There are times when even one voice speaking clearly, forcefully, res...

What an amazing level of power we are seeing at work here. Luke does say that it was “at the hands of the apostles” that these miracles were done, which seems to mean that most believers weren’t yet functioning at this high level. Even among the apostles, Peter seems to be exceptional (v15). If we remember that he was the disciple who had the courage to try and fail and give wrong answers, we shou...

What we’re seeing in this remarkable event is God disciplining His church. He’s revealing His standard of holiness and showing us the danger of hypocrisy. What may seem to us to be a small, insignificant sin, a lie told about an amount of money being given as a gift, we discover was viewed by God as an alarming spiritual danger which had to be removed immediately. Clearly, in His mind, there was n...

How many people would become Christians today if being baptized meant the government would seize their bank account, their spouse would be free to divorce them and take all the assets, if they were a student they would be removed from school, if employed they might be fired with no legal rights to protect them, their parents might not speak to them again, declaring them “dead,” and the community i...

Sometimes human leaders tell us to do things God has told us not to do, or they tell us to stop doing things God has told us we must do. And then they force us to choose whether we will obey them or God. By nature, Christians prefer to be peaceful and obey civil and religious authorities, and the Bible tells us that under normal circumstances that’s the way we should live (Ro 13:1-7). But there ma...

Jesus warned us that following Him would get us in trouble, and He didn’t promise that He would always get us out. But He did promise He would be with us in that moment, and would speak through us. He said when we stand before our accusers He would empower us and make us witnesses for Him. And this is exactly what we see happening here with Peter and John. Basically, they’re in trouble, standing i...

A startling reality confronts us in this passage. We see two wildly different responses to the same event. On the one hand, there are hundreds, possibly over a thousand people, who repent and believe, and on the other hand, there is a much smaller group who seem to feel no inclination whatsoever to repent and believe, but instead actively work to find a way to stop others from doing so. Both group...

When I meet an unbeliever, I need to watch and listen in order to discern what kind of unbeliever that person is. Is this someone who has simply never heard? Is this someone who has heard but didn’t understand? Is this someone who has been taught a very distorted picture of Jesus Christ? In other words, is the “Jesus” they are rejecting the real one? Or is this someone who does know the truth but...

Healing is an emotionally-charged topic. There are people who believe healing is for today and those who don’t. There are people who have been healed and those who haven’t. There are people whom God has used to heal others, and those who’ve tried and “failed.” There are even people who’ve walked away from God because they sought healing for a loved one, but that person died. So, by just mentioning...

We’re often told a person will be saved if they pray the sinners prayer. But that’s not true. Reciting a short prayer won’t save anybody. We’re often told if we raise our hands to receive Jesus we’ll be saved. But that’s not true either. And a lot of people have been misled into thinking they’ve done what it takes. The problem is that reciting a prayer or raising my hand can be done without really...

This is a very challenging passage. It describes people living out their faith in a way that is so different from our own experience that it leaves us confused or even suspicious. Their lifestyle was radical and we might feel the need to explain it away as an initial burst of enthusiasm which would soon be dimmed by the realities of life. I’ve even read someone who described it as a misguided atte...

If Jesus is Lord, why is there still so much rebellion? On that Pentecost morning Peter announced that Jesus is now seated at the Father’s right hand, and that the Father is bringing all of His enemies into submission to Him. Yet if we look around us we see a lot of spiritual warfare. The devil is still very active. The human race seems to be dividing and hardening in its attitudes. People are eit...

It’s almost like there were two men named Peter. The one we meet in the gospels is good-hearted, but often says the wrong thing at the wrong time. Only a few weeks earlier, that one fearfully denied to a servant girl he even knew Jesus. But on this Pentecost morning we’re listening to a very different man. This one has the courage to stand in front of thousands and tell them in unmistakable terms...

People don’t have to learn to be spiritual because essentially every one of us is a spirit. This is because God made us in His own image. Please notice, I’m not talking yet about people who are born-again. All human beings are spiritual, by virtue of the way God made them. People actually have to be taught not to be spiritual. In the secular western society in which we live each of us is trained t...

As we read this passage we’re watching a new era begin. The relationship between God’s Spirit and His people has changed forever. Never before had the Holy Spirit been able to live inside the sin-contaminated bodies of believers. Never before was such intimacy with God possible to all of God’s people, not just a special few. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and His resurrection from the dea...

So this is what Jesus meant when He spoke of the “promise of the Father” (Ac 1:4). Wow! What an amazing event! But, frankly, it’s so amazing that if I don’t understand what’s happening to these people I can easily end up in the same condition as the watching multitude: amazed and bewildered, which is to say, confused and frightened. Luke’s description of that Pentecost morning raises a lot of ques...