Acts 10-12

Super jazzed about this section of Acts. Here's why:

A. Acts 10: God makes the conscious decision to use humans to communicate the Gospel. 
          We see that Cornelius is a God-fearing man who was prayerful and cared for the poor. God sends an angel to tell Cornelius to send for Peter. Cornelius' guys find Peter and bring him back to Cornelius. Peter then tells Corny the Gospel and Corny and his whole family become believers. Yay!
          Now, this may seem insignificant or commonplace. Hurray, Peter shared the Gospel, people become Christ-followers. However, I think one thing we tend to miss is that there was an angel involved here. If you're all about efficiency, like I tend to be, then why in the world wouldn't you just have the angel tell Cornelius about the Gospel? Why do we need to get Peter involved here? Corny was already a God-fearing man, and was clearly willing to listen to the angel, so the efficiency-minded person in me is yelling, "WASTE OF TIME." However, I think that God was super intentional about this. The Gospel is to be spread by his people. He could use angels, but he chooses not to. He could send everyone post-its, or leave lots of voice mails, but he doesn't (usually. There are people who hear about Jesus via revelation or dream, and probably a post-it at one time or another). We are, decidedly, the vessels of Gospel-communication. Woah. Chew on that for a while.

B. Acts 12: 1-18: God answers prayer even when we don't think he will
        Herod put Peter in jail (sad trombone). Verse 5 says, "So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him." The night before Peter's big trial, an angel broke Peter out of jail (because, you know, angels can do that stuff). After all the guards become believers (you would too), Peter heads over to John's mom's house where people are gathered to pray for him. When he gets there Rhoda (fabulous name), answers the door and sees Peter. She tells everyone that Peter's back and they call her a crazy woman. Finally in verse 16, "But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished."
      Let's talk about something here. People were astonished to see Peter. Astonished. They were surprised to see Peter standing in front of them. This is interesting because we see in verse 5 that they were earnestly praying for Peter to be released. Earnestly. It sounds like they were right in the middle of praying for him when he showed up. What this tells me is that even though these people were praying for Peter, they didn't actually believe that he was getting out of jail. How often do we do this? We pray for something but don't actually hope or expect that God will show up. Do you believe that God can do the impossible? Do you pray with hopeful expectation? What are you asking for in faith (Hebrews 11:1- confidence about what we hope for, and assurance about what we don't see)?

C. Acts 12: 20-24: The Bible can be pretty comical (In the least sacrilegious way possible)
       Read the account Herod's death here. Herod allows people to call him a god, and then this happens: "Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died." 
       WOAH. To quote Ron Burgundy (for the second post in a row),"That escalated quickly..."
       But, don't worry guys, because immediately following verse 23, "But the word of God continued to spread and flourish." So... there's that.

Happy Monday! :)