Learning to Live From the Acts

Eugenia Price

Description

There is no way to understand the Book of Acts without affirming the existence of a dynamic and living Spirit.

Eugenia Price embodies this Spirit in words which make The Acts a joyous revelation. Something extraordinary happened to the men and women in this New Testament book, ending their grief and filling them with sudden courage. From the moment they poured into the streets on Pentecost to the time of Paul’s last words from prison, Jesus energized these early Christians from within.

Their lives reveal the triumphant story of how the church began to “happen,” and in those first conflict-torn, joy-filled days we are able to see how it was meant to be, even now, for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

Miss Price writes, “Why it is not this way for us now, or why it is, at best, only this way now and then, I feel we must decide. I find little or no doctrine in the Acts, but I do find life, and great and simple helps in learning to live it.”

Learning to Live from the Acts is a sequel to the author’s book, Learning to Live From the Gospels.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Biblical Studies
• the Gospels
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie
• Acts
• Bible study
• Eugenia Price
• Jesus
• New Testament
• Christianity
• Acts of the Apostles

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781684427178
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Learning to Live from the Acts
Books by Eugenia Price
Fiction
THE BELOVED INVADER
NEW MOON RISING
Nonfiction
DISCOVERIES
THE BURDEN IS LIGHT
NEVER A DULL MOMENT
EARLY WILL I SEEK THEE
SHARE MY PLEASANT STONES
WOMAN TO WOMAN
WHAT IS GOD LIKE?
BELOVED WORLD
A WOMAN S CHOICE
FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF
GOD SPEAKS TO WOMEN TODAY
THE WIDER PLACE
MAKE LOVE YOUR AIM
JUST AS I AM
LEARNING TO LIVE FROM THE GOSPELS
THE UNIQUE WORLD OF WOMEN
Learning To Live From The cts
by
Eugenia Price
Turner Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee
www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright 1970, 2020 Eugenia Price
Learning to Live From the Acts
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to Turner Publishing Company, 4507 Charlotte Avenue, Suite 100, Nashville, Tennessee, [phone], fax [phone], E-mail: [e-mail] .
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Cover design: Bruce Gore
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Upon Request
9781684427154 paperback
9781684427161 hardback
9781684427178 ebook
Contents
Preface
The Acts of the Apostles
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
P REFACE
Even in our technological era, there is no way to cope with the content of the book called the Acts of the Apostles if the reader rejects the fact that there is a living, energetically active Holy Spirit. The men and women written about in this lively New Testament book simply could not have acted as they did on their own. Something happened to them on the Day of Pentecost that turned them and their world upside down by pragmatic standards. Grieving, nervous, discouraged men who had, only days before, been hiding in a locked room, afraid for their lives, moved at once out into the streets of Jerusalem, full of courage, balance, spirit-their sorrowing at an end, life suddenly worth living, Consider their grief by itself for a moment. The Man whom they had loved and trusted enough to desert their families and their jobs to follow, the Master in whom they believed as children believe in a good father, their King who was going to re-establish the throne of David and put them all in important positions in it was gone-crucified like a criminal between two thieves. Their hopes for their own futures lay in the blood and the dust at the foot of that now empty cross; but, more important than that, their dearest Friend was dead.
How, then, could some concentrated kind of psychological phenomenon on the Day of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost have caused those grieving, broken hearts to mend in a matter of minutes? If God had not kept his word given to them through Jesus to send a Comforter-the Holy Spirit-how did they become the men and women whose grief ended suddenly and never returned? This is not the way of grief for human beings. Real grief seldom ends. The healthy mind, fixed on God, can learn to live with it, but not instantly. It often takes years.
The men and women who entered the Upper Room to wait in one accord for the promised Comforter were wearing the same clothes when they poured out into the streets on Pentecost; they looked the same physically, but they were not the same. They had heard no sermons on how to handle grief and fear; they had read no books; they had merely waited together until the One whom they loved and believed in-and Mourned-came back to them! The dear, familiar voice was still; the loved, familiar figure no longer walked up ahead, leading them but in a way only God can explain, their Master was suddenly back. Back, living his life in the person of the Holy Spirit-not with them, as he had been before, but in them: in their very bodies and minds and hearts. They were no longer on their own. The very Spirit of the God who created them and redeemed them in Jesus Christ was available to these simple people as Jesus had never been available to them. When he had walked the dusty roads and climbed the barren hills with them during their three years together, he had taught and inspired and encouraged them, but then he had had no means of energizing them from within, no way to enlighten their minds from within, no way to strengthen their hearts. Now, suddenly, he could, and the riotous, joy-filled, sometimes tragic, but always triumphant story of the early Church began to happen.
The Acts of the Apostles is not a complete biography of Paul or even a partial one, although a generous part of the adventure is Paul s. Neither is it Peter s story, or Stephen s, or Barnabas , or John s. It is as though the writer, Luke, felt it quite sufficient merely to give us a glimpse of the continuing difference it made in each life, detailed enough and covering just enough time to make it perfectly clear that these things can go on happening-that life can go on being this way for anyone who follows Jesus Christ and obeys the promptings of his Spirit within. The short account is uneven, minutely descriptive in parts, swift and merely outlined in others. Rather than writing a carefully planned treatise, Luke has seemed to flash a bright light on what he felt should be an example of the daily lives of all believers in the risen Lord he followed. Here and there in the first conflict-torn, joy-filled days of the early Church, we are permitted to see for ourselves how it was meant to be for us who call ourselves Christians.
Why it is not this way for us now, or why it is, at best, only this way now and then, I feel we must decide. I find little or no doctrine in the Acts, but I do find life, and great and simple helps in learning to live it.
The people whose lives we glimpse in these pages were not spiritual giants-not even Paul. They were just people with personality and disposition defects like our own, with needs and problems and weaknesses we can all recognize. Even Paul did not eventually become a perfect man-no one did. No one does. But they all grew if they obeyed the promptings of the very real, living Spirit within them. I once heard a young lady exclaim: Well, if those people in that group at our church are filled with the Holy Spirit and are still as unattractive as they are, I don t want to be! An older, wiser man smiled at her and replied: But, my dear, just think how repulsive they must have been without Him!
I thought of this little true story as I worked through the Acts of the Apostles and rejoiced that God didn t have to limit himself to spiritually superior people. There aren t any, really, and so we are the ones who are blessed, because he limited himself to us and then figured out a way through the Holy Spirit to make our potentials limitless.
E UGENIA P RICE
St. Simons Island, Georgia
February, 1970
The Acts of the Apostles
C HAPTER 1
vv. 1 and 2
The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:
Most authorities agree that Luke had not yet completed certain portions of his Gospel, but at least he had written enough to be convinced that, as always, Jesus was taking every precaution to be sure His followers understood at least something of the strange events of the past days. Until the day of his return to the Father, Jesus patiently instructed them. He has not changed.
v. 3
To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:
The Master was not only infinitely careful with his chosen ones, mindful that they were not yet filled with the Spirit; he stayed on earth in his resurrected body for forty days, giving them many infallible proofs that his Resurrection was a true resurrection-not a theory, not a rumor. The Biblical account does not tell us about everyone he visited during these forty days, but it does say that he was seen of them forty days. He must have covered a lot of ground, must have spent the entire forty days making certain that none of his own doubted that the Father had literally brought him from the grave. And daily he kept talking to them about the true kingdom of God-as always, doing all he could to protect them from confusion.
v. 4
And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith