Acts!

I'm reading Acts right now. Yesterday when I was reading it on my phone, for the NLT version it said it was called Acts of the Apostles, and it was the first time I realized that it was a book about the acts the apostles did! When I told my parents of my epiphany my mom said, "Oh! I've never thought of that either!" My dad laughed and shook his head and said, "What?? How did you miss that??" Lol.

I'm on Acts 18 as of today, but here are some of my thoughts so far...

There are several accounts of people being put in jail and then angels getting them out of it in Acts!! So cool. I forgot that there was more than just one time this happened.

In Acts 6, people complain to the twelve disciples that the Greek-speaking believers' widows were being discriminated in the daily distribution of food. "We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word." I love this! Because if there was injustice, they wanted it to be fixed, but it was not their place to be dealing with it because it would hinder then from spending time in prayer and teaching. They gave the job to someone else. Delegating is important, and nobody can do everything.

In Acts 8:15-18, it says that there were people who had been baptized in Jesus, but they had not yet received the Holy Spirit, so Peter and John laid hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit. It made it seem like the Holy Spirit wasn't received with baptism, but that's what I always thought happened. In Acts 10:44-48, there are believers that actually receive the Holy Spirit first and then are baptized, and since they are Gentiles, Peter says, "Can anyone object to them being baptized, now that they have received the Holy Spirit just as we did?" Fascinating.

Many miracles happen in Acts, from a dead woman being brought back to life in Acts 9, to blind people seeing again, lame people walking, etc. During these occasions, it makes people believe God exists. They see the direct power of God and turn to Him and follow Him. Sometimes I wish that we had more miracles today. I wish that people were able to say, "Be healed!" and immediately people are healed by the power of God, and that people were able to follow Him because of that. But I think that it gets messy when there are fake people doing that. What does happen though, is God answers big prayers sometimes, and we should be out there telling people about it. We should say, "I prayed for this, and look, God answered it! And it wasn't something I did or something that just 'happened,' but only God could have done this!" I hope that by doing that, it will bring God glory and people will begin to see that God's power still works in our lives today, just in a different way.

In Act 15, Paul and Barnabas, who have traveled together for however long, have a "sharp disagreement" about bringing someone else along with them who had bailed earlier, and they split up and went their own ways. :-( It's like a sad goodbye from an argument! It then continues to follow Paul, since he was the one who didn't want the guy who bailed with him, and because Luke, who wrote the book, went with him. He changes into "we" in Acts 15, indicating that he was there for that part. Acts 15 has the third jail escape of the book.

In Acts 18, up to the point I read today, in verse 9, Jesus comes to Paul in a vision and says, don't worry, nobody will attack or harm him, not to be afraid but to speak out boldly. So he stayed there a year and a half. But in the verses right after that, he is eventually taken in to court and since the court won't do anything to silence him, they throw him out and they beat him! But Jesus had said he won't be harmed! So I don't understand that part. Was that the signal for him to leave? That when his protection from persecution was over, it was time for him to move on?