Where are the Wonders?

Where are the wonders?

Have you ever read thru the Book of Acts and pondered what happened to all the wonders? We know the men and women who fill the pages were like us. Their hearts were filled with the same kinds of hopes, fears, troubles, and sin. But their lives show me that something is missing in my life. They had a power about them where even as life crashed they stood to their feet and overcame. The Holy Spirit lived in them, but does us too. So what makes the stand out on the pages of our Bibles with bold stories filled with wonders?

Stories where they prayed and they didn’t only feel God in their hearts, but their physical world moved in response to their prayers.

As I began to study them one verse caught my eye, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Acts 2:42 Do you see the pronoun “they” at the beginning of the verse? If you’re like me, you may be tempted to think it is referring to the apostles, even though it really wouldn’t make sense if the apostles were devoted to their own teachings, would it? Somehow, every time I have read this, I pictured in my head the super-Christians. But who is this “they”? In the verse right before, we see who “they” are.

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. They devoted themselves to…(Acts 2:41-42)

Basically, it is us. I don’t consider myself a super-Christian, so I haven’t ever thought about how this verse would apply to me. I thought it was just for the preachers, missionaries-you know, people like that. But people like me? Not so much. If I were to write the verse out of the reality of my life, at times it would read like:

They read their Bibles semi-regularly and attend church pretty well, except in the summer – and the winter too, if it’s a cold one. Breaking bread- if that is going out to eat, I can check it off! Prayer, even less than Bible reading.

Just doesn’t seem to have the same punch, does it?

How did these people discipline their lives so they were considered devoted? Why is it that in my life, and maybe yours too, we have somehow got in our minds that these kinds of experiences are only for the elite, people like Billy Graham? When in reality they were experienced by the masses in the book of Acts? Where does that kind of devotion come from?

Awe.

When was the last time you can remember being in awe of what was happening in the life of the believers you know? When was the last time you can remember when God was so visibly at work that they only response you could have was a sense of awe? That’s the reality these people lived.

The believers in the book of Acts had to completely rearrange their lives to be devoted to the teachings, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer.

My husband, Chad, has recently had a spell where deer hunting has taken over our lives. He purchased all kinds of “needed” items to successfully hunt a deer. He spent time in the woods, scouting the perfect place to hunt the deer. He spent time practicing for the moment when he finally would see the deer. There were article read and re-read, with tips from the experts.

Needless to say, he had to do some rearranging to do all this-all for something that, in the best case scenario, will feed him for a year. Notice I said feed him; I’m not too sure the rest of us are into eating deer, although he assures me I will like it. But his was a life rearranged for something that has little to no significance. Seeing him become so devoted to deer hunting has given me a very clear picture of what the believers in the book of Acts would have been doing.

Are we willing to rearrange some things in our lives to become devoted? I think some of us are. Maybe we have become so fed up with the status quo in our lives that we crave being able to see God do mighty deeds with our own eyes.

I’m all about the practical and this passage is hard for me because I see what I want to be—devoted—but the question is how to accomplish that. I wish there were some kind of checklist we could go through and at the end of it be devoted!

But there’s really not a checklist per se but more of a picture painted for us. It is a picture where we can see these people arranging their lives in such a way that Christ became the overwhelming focus of their days. But each of us will have to begin making changes that are personal to us with the goal of Christ becoming our focus.

We have the same resources they had: the teaching of the apostles and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We even have more resources; in addition to our Bibles we have access to a wide range of teaching materials. We have great men and women of the faith who we can pick up a book and read their life story. The challenging part to me, is realizing as I read their story in Acts, their devotion is what made their lives worth imitating.

What I’m lacking, and maybe you are, is the obedience to put it in practice daily. We have to be willing to make decisions and rearrange some areas all so Jesus becomes the focus of our days. These are hard choices at times but as I am becoming a woman devoted to her God, I already know in my heart he’s already devoted to me.

This is an excerpt from “Seriously God? I’m Doing Everything I Know To Do and It’s Not Working“.

We hope you were encouraged!