{"id":1183,"date":"2014-02-24T09:49:01","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T15:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/wp\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2014-02-24T09:49:01","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T15:49:01","slug":"acts-chapter-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/?p=1183","title":{"rendered":"Acts Chapter Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The theme of chapter nine is death to life.\u00a0 Saul,\u00a0who will become Paul,\u00a0is brought from spiritual death to spiritual life.\u00a0 Dorcas is brought from physical death to physical life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul was very religious and desired to follow God but even in all of his sincerity he was wrong.\u00a0 Saul had the zeal for God but he was spiritually blind to who Christ was and what the death, burial and resurrection of Christ meant.\u00a0 Saul was made blind physically so he could see spiritually.\u00a0 God allows events in our life to teach us, and strengthen us for His glory. When he gained spiritual sight Saul surrendered to Christ.\u00a0 This is where salvation takes places.\u00a0 Salvation happens when helpless repentances grips our hearts and we see our need and our hope only rest in the cross of Jesus.\u00a0 This is a one time transformation that is called by Jesus in John 3 being born again.\u00a0 Have you realized your sinful condition and do you understand Jesus died for you on the cross.\u00a0 Have you repented of your sinful condition, not just your sins, but your condition of being a condemned sinner and prayerfully accepted the act of God\u2019s love on the cross as the payment for your condition?\u00a0 If you have not done this will you please do that today?\u00a0 Let us know if you have and the next step of obedience is baptism.<\/p>\n

What does surrender look like?\u00a0 We know we have surrendered when we say with Saul in verse 6, \u201cwhat will you have me to do\u201d?\u00a0 We know we have surrendered when we say with Ananias, \u201cbehold, I am here, Lord\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 We know, we know when all we know is Jesus.\u00a0 We know we don\u2019t understand when we look at Christ and have conditions to our obedience.\u00a0 Now we may have questions, Ananias wanted to make sure God knew what he knew about Saul.\u00a0 When God directs us there will be moments where we say; \u201cSay What?\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 But Ananias was obedient and led Saul into the relationship with Christ.\u00a0 Saul surrendered to baptism without hesitation.\u00a0 Now Saul became the hated one by the Jews, because he preached and taught Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 Saul was their leader and knew the scriptures and many got saved.\u00a0 A Christian\u2019s life should not be very difficult when we make it about obedience to Christ.<\/p>\n

God used Peter to raise Dorcas from the dead at the close of the chapter.\u00a0 In verse 36 it said that Dorcas was full of good works and alms deeds.\u00a0 For this reason I believe Peter was allowed to raise her from the dead, she was beneficial to the work of Christ.\u00a0 Again the question Christ asks me is; is my life beneficial to the kingdom of Christ and His gospel?\u00a0 What if God said I will grant you another 10 years, what impact will those years be for His Kingdom?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s advance God\u2019s Kingdom through obedience to His Word and the faithfulness of sharing His Word.\u00a0 Today God may use you to raise someone from spiritual death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1184,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/1184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbcnewhaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}