Greetings, dear ones.
We’ve had a little snow here at our place. I’ll stick on a view from our front porch…as well as one from yesterday when I took the kids up into the snow in the hills above Colton.
Today is a holiday. So I can’t get a trip permit for the boom truck today. I’m hoping to use it to do those sign removals tomorrow.
I’m slated to see out doctor this afternoon to see if she can offer something to knock this deep cough and possible sinus infection. I can’t afford to be down.
Have a blessed day. Ray.
If God is the Author of this first Pentecostal revival, and if His Spirit was active in the composing of the Biblical record, why do you suppose He incorporated this seeminly bizarre account of Ananias and Sapphira into the experience of the early church, and into the Biblical text for our reading? After all, killing people as a consequence of their premeditated deception is certainly not the norm for how God works today. If it was the norm, I suppose our churches would be pretty empty.
My own reflections lead me to think that the Lord simply wished to use this event as a profound teaching moment—helping His early church to get off on the right foot, by dramatically punctuating a very fundamental and essential principle for all believers to live by—“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline” (Proverbs 1:7, NIV). As I review the description of this event, I have to believe that both Ananias and Sapphira were NOT governed by a “fear of the Lord” and thereby fell prey to the alternative default setting of being fools—causing them to forsake “wisdom and discipline”—and yield to stupid. To be sure, lying to God is not very smart.
Thinking further about it, I’m inclined to believe that ALL LYING is a serious breach of God’s plan for man—we who are indelibly imprinted with His image and likeness—which has to include TRUTH. When and if that fundamental rule is habitually violated without conviction, correction, and repentance, a person is unwittingly setting himself up for a fate worse than human imaginations can handle: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and ALL LIARS — their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death” (Revelation 21:8, NIV). Wow! That should be enough to scare the HELL out of all of us!
If THE FEAR OF THE LORD is so absolutely essential for both my well being and my ultimate destiny, and if I’m aware that I lack that quality in any measure within my general lifestyle, I have to ask, “What would it take for me upgrade my heart and mind with this essential component? Do I need to be traumatized by seeing people drop dead as a consequence of their violations? Or am I willing and to do everything I reasonably can to incorporate “wisdom and discipline” into my operating system from the available resources of Biblical TRUTH? I choose the latter.
It occurs to me that every truly blood-washed, sin-forgiven, Spirit-filled, heaven-bound child of God should be driven and motivated by the same resolve expressed by Peter and John. After all, how is it possible to be secretly full of redemptive passion?