Effective

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

EFFECTIVE

Acts 2:22-24

22 "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23 This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

NIV

It must of hurt these men to the core to hear these words of Peter, being told that they were manipulated by wicked men. But at the same time their hearts might have been encouraged to hear that is was God who handed Jesus over to them because he had this set purpose because he knew exactly what he wanted to do. This was not just a flash mob, but a designed plan of God to set men free from death and give them an opportunity to have eternal life. If we listen to these words, we can understand that we too were the cause for God to have this set purpose. We all are wicked men, and our evil deeds are the reason Jesus had to be nailed to that cross. Although it is true the many of us are now forgiven of our sin, and we have been saved from the agony of death, and it will be impossible for death to keep its hold on us, we were still the reason for God to have to come up with this plan for our salvation. If we begin to think that we are good enough, we are fooling ourselves. If we think we are living a perfectly Christian lifestyle we are deceiving ourselves. The truth is we are forgiven. The truth is we need to accept this Jesus of Nazareth who was accredited by God to us by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among them, and is still doing among us. Although we need to accept him by faith, he is still in the miracle, wonder and sign business. Many of us have personal testimonies of these acts of God in our lives, and we should be standing up as Peter was doing, but telling men of America, “Listen to this……..” We cannot depend on or hope that a few pastors might include a salvation message to someone who wanders into our church, in fact, we cannot even depend on someone wandering into our church. Peter was not a perfect man, nor was he highly educated. He did not attend a seminary, or denominational Bible college. He was not licensed or ordained by anyone other than God. He had no public speaking experience or for that matter any training in sharing the Gospel. But what Peter had was the empowering of the Holy Spirit. We are not perfect men or woman, and many of us do not have any Bible college education, license or ordination papers issued by men, but what we have is the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to stand up and tell others, “Listen to this”. We have been called by God, ordained by God and empowered by God. Even in Peter’s imperfection he was effective for God. Even in our imperfection we too can be effective for God.