More Than Bread

Send me a Text Message! In this episode, we will focus on one small statement in Acts 9. It is a small statement with great significance.  Are you ready? Here it is... "You have been chosen." What  comes to mind when you hear those words? "You have been chosen." Well you might say, it depends. Chosen for what? If you get a registered letter from the Government, that begins with...

Send me a Text Message! Lost people matter to God. Your neighbors, coworkers, classmates and friends matter to God. Your enemies matter to God. Acts 8 is a reminder that not only did Jesus go the cross because lost people matter to God, even after the cross he will do everything he can to bring people to Jesus to find life in the Kingdom of God. Lost people matter to God in ways that sometimes it...

Send me a Text Message! Acts 7-8 describe a defining moment for the church.  Stephen's moment of sacrifice defined our movement as a movement of people who were full of faith, and full of the Spirit, full of grace, and full of power. Stephen's ending moments defined our movement as a movement of people who were fully joyfully surrendered to their King, a movement of courageously generous...

Send me a Text Message! One reason why reading the book of Acts is so important, is because it's a reminder of something significant. We read Acts and we can hear, maybe ever so faintly hear, this call that echoes down through the centuries...  "There is a cause, there is a story being written that is worthy of your life." As I read the ending of Stephen's story, I realize that...

Send me a Text Message! If I lay it all on the line, God’s gonna waste my life. That's the thought that comes to mind when I read Stephen's sermon in Acts 7. Sure Stephen was filled with passionate courage and preached it straight to the Jewish religious leaders. But then look at what happened. And we think, "If I say yes to God, he's going to send me to the last place in the w...

Send me a Text Message! Acts chapter 6 is a turning point in our movement. Up until Acts 6, the only names you ever hear about is Peter and John, once in awhile James. Everyone else is part of a group, or just a number. But after Acts 6 it changes. After Acts 6, everyone has a  mission. Ministry is handed off from a few leaders to everyone. In chapter 6, it's Stephen. He's preaching, hea...

Send me a Text Message! As we dig into Acts 6, here is the first thought that comes to my mind.  Sometimes the church is both an unstoppable force and an unspeakable mess. The church in Acts was an amazing movement, full of power and courage,  a joy and generosity that would just knock the spiritual socks off your feet. But it wasn't pure. It wasn't perfect. Don't forget the deceit...

Send me a Text Message! In Acts chapter 5, we find the early church experiencing intense persecution from the religious authorities. The apostles have been arrested, flogged, and commanded to stop speaking about Jesus. But instead of being silenced and scared, they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the Name.   Can you imagine that mindset today? How many of us would con...

Send me a Text Message! In Acts 5, a religious leader by the name of Gamliel, let loose with some wisdom on the  Jewish religious leaders. He warned them to leave Peter and John alone because if this movement was not of God, it would die out. But if it was of God...they would find themselves fighting against God!  The church in Acts was of God. It was filled with people who were experiencing the f...

Send me a Text Message! To turn the world upside down, we must get real with our sin.  We have to take off our masks and get real with our sin. When we get real with our sin, grace happens and life is  transformed.  If you grew up in the church, and you are wearing a mask of spirituality that hides the sin in your heart, then you don't like the story of Annanias and Sapphira, in Acts 5. You h...

Send me a Text Message! This episode is about stuff and our masks and getting real with each other and God. And a little bit about what sometimes happens when God gets real with us! One of the amazing things about people giving up their stuff is that stuff is one of the most secure and effective masks we wear. Right? Because if we have stuff on the outside, then people assume that we are good on t...

Send me a Text Message! Some of you think that there is simply no way God can do anything of significance  through you.  You beg off every time He extends His hand of partnership, because  you are just an ordinary nobody, a common anybody. You don't have the training for this or the experience for that. But  the most important question is, "Are you willing to be with Jesus." The hea...

Send me a Text Message! When I read Acts 4, my first thought is this, "Before we turn the world upside-down, God may need to shake-up our church! In Acts 4, there's a prayer meeting that shook a building. We'll actually the Spirit of God did the shaking and I can’t help but ask, "God do you have it in you to do it one more time?  Would You shake us until we become the church th...

Send me a Text Message! I want to dance, but even more I want to see those around me dance. When the crippled man of Acts 3 began to dance in the temple, do you understand his crippled place  become the glory bookmark in the chapter of the story entitled, "When the Spirit was  poured out." Where are the bookmarks in your life? What potential bookmarks are  there in the lives of people ar...

Send me a Text Message! As we dive into Acts 3, we encounter one of favorite early church moments, a truly  iconic miracle, the story of a lame beggar who became a dancing cripple. In fact, I’ve  used that as my user name on more than occasion, because in the end, aren’t we all just  dancing cripples?  And I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but when a cripple dances, a crowd begin...

Send me a Text Message! "Wait for the Spirit," Jesus said. Then the Spirit came and the church was birthed.  It was a church of humble power and courageous generosity, a church that lived against the grain of society but loved so deeply many in that culture were compelled to join them. It became a church that beat down the gates of hell to rescue neighbors from darkness. This was the chu...

Send me a Text Message! I want to live the uncommon life that comes from an uncommon encounter with the living God.  And as much as I want to see signs and wonders like the healing of bodies; even more I hunger to see the healing and renovation of hearts. I hunger to see the healing of 10's of 1000's of hearts; the kind of wholesale renovation that would lead God to be pleased to pour ou...

Send me a Text Message! Acts 2:42-47 is the original destination for the church. Don't get me wrong, the Acts 2 church was just as full of imperfect people as we are today.  The Acts 2 church would make mistakes just like we do today. But there was a freshness of Spirit and when that Spirit is let loose in the church, I believe the church is the hope of the world.  I don't mean a buildin...

Send me a Text Message! What if it's true that God offers us His presence in the same the same way, he offered it at Pentecost? What if a group of people could be so filled with the Spirit that the world was changed...turned upside down? What if what happened in Acts 2, could happen today? Would we want it? That day in the upper room as the Spirit came, tongues of fire sat upon each head. Fir...

Send me a Text Message! We can be filled with many different things...good and bad. What are you filled with today?  It's an uncommon call to be filled with the Spirit of God. We're not exactly sure what it means, but we do know what it's like to be filled with something. If someone says that they are filled with grief, or filled with fear, despair, anger, ambition or joy...of fille...

Send me a Text Message! Imagine you had a chance to be there in the upper room on Pentecost when the Spirit of God came...but you missed it.  Imagine you missed it. You weren't there. You didn't join the group. Got distracted. Got scared. Other things were more important. You missed it. What did they have to do in order to receive the promise? Just wait. Be there. 120 men and women waite...

Send me a Text Message! When God asks us to wait, it's always a word of hope. When God says, WAIT, He's  promising you that there will be a tomorrow.  Wait is a word of hope. God's Wait is  always tied to a promise, which simply means there is still more to come. Some of you have been waiting on promises you believe God gave you years ago, maybe decades ago. God put something in you...

Send me a Text Message! "The Holy Spirit will come upon you," Jesus said.  "And you will be baptized, immersed in the Holy Spirit.  You will receive power and you will be my witnesses everywhere you go." I love my church. I see God at work here. But if there's anything that I know we need more of, it is the power of God.  So if we want to turn the world upside down, we hav...

Send me a Text Message! Before I recorded this episode, I was listening to a playlist that I put together and the title of the playlist is simply "Jesus." The song that was playing before I recorded is a song by Terrian entitled, "Honestly We Just Need Jesus."  I would add it to the episode if I was better at editing. But instead, click the song and listen to it. It will set up...

Send me a Text Message! We want to live in an upside down world because what we have come to experience as right-side-up is all wrong. So let's start with that moment when we were first called, "those who turned the world upside down." It happened a few years after the resurrection, and it's recorded in Acts 17:1-6. That's why every time I read the book of Acts, I'm p...