Editor’s Note: The AMI QT devotionals from February 17-19 are provided by the AMI Teaching Pastor Ryun Chang.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
Acts 4:23-8
When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain? 26 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”
The Oakland Athletics was the last team to win three consecutive World Series from 1972 to 1974. Ironically, although the players feuded among themselves, their common dislike for the team owner Charles Finley brought them together. Similarly, Herod and Pilate, who “had been enemies,” became friends over making sport of Jesus (Lk. 23:11-2). Perhaps that friendship pales in comparison to an alliance formed among Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin during the World War II. While Roosevelt and Churchill must’ve been horrified to later find that Stalin engineered the genocide of millions of people, including the Russian leader in the alliance must have seemed like a good idea since their common enemy was Hitler.
So, what does it mean that the nations, rulers and people plot in vain and rage against God? Today, it means, first, when the heads of the nations seek to work together, the last thing they want to discuss and to avoid conflict, is God and religion. Actually, that has changed: exculpating Islam as a religion of terror has now become a vogue. (The “mainstream” Islam isn’t.) Consequently, the God of the Bible, relegated to the level of the gods of world religions, is ignored or even chastised for alleged past wrongs. Once, President Obama, while condemning the terrorism of ISIS, mentioned the Crusades as if to say, “You Christians were no better.” (It’s not that simple.)
Second, the moral values and the spiritual truths the Scripture advocates are bypassed in lieu of their secular counterparts. For instance, while UNESCO’s sex education curriculum tout abortion and contraception, abstinence is merely mentioned as “only one of a range of choices.”
Third, it means that people who don’t believe in God mock His existence as well as the believers. Long before Richard Dawkins penned “The God Delusion,” Sigmund Freud wrote, “When a man . . . accept[s] all the absurdities [of] religious doctrines . . . we need not be greatly surprised at the weakness of his intellect.”
So, since nothing has really changed from the past, we shouldn’t hide and be passive; rather, we should show the world why the Christian faith offers a more reasonable faith than other world religions—for this life and the afterlife; and demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of atheism. To do that, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, diligently study the Bible, and read critical books that can stretch our minds.
Prayer
Father, I marvel at Your infinite patience over humans who constantly defy You, even questioning Your very existence. While it must be infuriating to see this disturbing pattern generation after generation, You’ve been amazingly merciful by giving us many opportunities to get to know You through the gospel of Christ. Thank You!
Bible Reading for Today: Genesis 47
Lunch Break Study
Read Genesis 11:1, 3-8: Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. . . . 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
Question to Consider
- There is a first-time for everything: what happened here that had never happened before?
- What was intrinsically wrong with what they did? Are we guilty of doing the same thing?
- In a general sense, how would you respond to those who advocate atheism or religious pluralism? What would be your basic strategy (Ps. 14:1; Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12)?
Notes
- This was the first time that humans united themselves to directly challenge God’s authority, that is, the right to rule men. Of course, Adam and Eve did that as well, but it was done at an individual level (but with a widespread consequence).
- This was an attempt to deify man as if to say, “We don’t need God anymore; since we got up here on our own, we will govern ourselves from here and out.” Anyone who doesn’t believe in God or any “believer” who doesn’t allow Him to rule his/her life is really no different from these men.
- I would show inconsistencies in their views. First, I would ask how all religions can lead to the same God when their essential doctrines are as different as night and day. Second, I would ask the atheists to explain the origin of the universe—none that they offer is factual but rather a preferred belief.
Evening Reflection
As you look back to today, did you hear anyone mocking God and the Christian faith? How did you respond? Why did you respond the way you did? 1 Peter 3:15 says: “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Are you obeying that command? Pray for boldness and wisdom. And also, read a good book: I am presently reading The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi, a Harvard psychiatrist—I highly recommend this book.
Editor’s Note: The AMI QT Devotionals for February 15-16 are provided by Doug Tritton. Doug, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania, is currently pursuing a M.Div. at Gordon Conwell Seminary while working fulltime. He is married to Cindy and they serve at Symphony Church in Boston. 
When I was in middle school, I had to give a presentation in one of my classes—this was so frightening to me. Never before had I stood before a group of people to give a talk for more than a few seconds. Extremely nervous, I gave my presentation, but unable to really think about what I was saying. Afterwards, I remember my teacher asking me if I even breathed once during my presentation; apparently, I was so nervous that I could not even breathe!
In my current job, I work on the release of tech products. There is much momentum as we work on the hottest new trend and put great effort into launching the product; but then once we finish and release it, there is a lull. Since we are not in sales, we do not know right away how the product is doing in the market—and so all we can do is wait and see.
Here is a sobering thought for Valentine’s Day, a day reserved to celebrate significant others in our lives: Have you ever been used by someone, especially those who are close to you? It’s natural to expect care and concern from those who we think love us, but when we find out we have been used and disregarded, our spirits can sink to the dark depths due to the deeply cutting hurt we suffer (Gaylin, Feelings, 148-164). Former Columbia University psychiatry professor Willard Gaylin insightfully describes the feeling of being used when he writes, “The sense of being used . . . arises from the fear that the person dealing with us is not involved with us in emotional ties and affection—where there may be mutual use—but is simply using us as an instrument, a vehicle of his own purposes. We then are equated with the things in his life. We are signs of his needs, not of his affections.
Sometimes the Bible calls on us to be used: although I doubt Jesus meant in Ma tthew 5:40-1 that we should let thieves steal whatever they want from us because we should never resist. (Hyperbole seems to be in play here.) Nevertheless, Jesus conveys the message that sometimes doing good means letting ourselves be used by others for the glory of God. Jesus should know: while He let Judas to use Him to profit himself materially, Jesus allowed it to profit us spiritually.
Theologian Jack Deere, who lost both his father and son to suicide, wrote, “Time does not heal shame. Shame will not go away by itself. It might be hidden for a little while but sooner or later, it comes back. . . . It’s always there and it tells you this: ‘You know, if these people really knew what you were like, they wouldn’t even want you in this room.’ And because you’ve got this gaping hole you can’t share with anyone, you feel so lonely in the room and like you really need to keep this secret.”
Philosopher Avishai Margalit describes guilt as that reaction when we view ourselves from the eyes of our inner conscience, making us pale, and shame as that emotion when we view ourselves from the eyes of the other, making us blush. In any case, the two serve as a devastating duo in our psyche: they can make us feel dirty, hypocritical, secretive, alone, burdened, despairing. They are the sorrowful children of our aspirations towards the highest moral ideals coupled with the wretchedness of our fallen, sinful selves. While other tortures may come from external forces, the torture of guilt and shame can be an especially painful assault as it comes from within. I once heard a young man, who had actually overcome his sin of masturbating to pornography, confess, “I don’t know which is harder: stopping porn or dealing with the guilt that I’ve had since stopping.”
We want to be a good person, yet, we fail in so many ways. And it frustrates us to no end; evidently, that’s how Paul felt as well. We want to forgive or stop our sexual sin, yet we find ourselves not being who we want to be. For many, this routine of failure can cause painful questioning: Is God even with me? How can I live with these feelings of self-doubt, loathing, and shame? Am I even a Christian? How can I change?
And that was the experience of a pastor who finally found freedom from years of torturous struggle with strip clubs and pornography. He confessed: “I cannot tell you why I had to endure ten years of near-possession before being ready for deliverance…. But what I can tell you, especially those of you who have hung on every turn of my own pilgrimage because it so closely corresponds to yours, is that God did come through for me. The phrase may sound heretical, but to me, after so many years of failure, it felt as if he had suddenly decided to be there after a long absence. I prayed, hid nothing (hide nothing from God?), and he heard me.”
In the pit of “momentary affliction,” there is the struggle for meaning, answers, comfort, God; the darkness covers us. Jesus is the light, but sometimes, Jesus does not take away the pain—the cancer is still there, the job is still lost, our loved ones are still dead.
“After hearing your testimony about family turmoil,” someone says, “mine is just like yours”; but, after hearing that person’s story, you realize that what appear to be similar stories on the surface, they are actually quite different—while you spoke of unilateral forgiveness, the other person was talking about a conditional forgiveness: They are not the same.
Editor’s Note: The AMI QT devotionals from February 8 to 14 are co-written by the AMI Teaching Pastor Ryun Chang (Ph.D.) and Joshua Chang, a graduate of Swarthmore College and currently a student at Yale Divinity School. They are taking a break from the study of Acts.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but I once saw a movie with an absurd amount of violence and foul language. After it was over, however, I felt strongly defiled—scenes of gore were now flashing through my head, curse words now seemed on the tip of my tongue. I realized I couldn’t watch a movie like that again—it prods me on a path I do not want to follow. The movie portrayed itself as harmless fun; it taught no official doctrine explicitly against Christ. But its ethic was one of glorified violence and vile speech, and I could feel it setting my heart on the ways of the world and not of God. I felt like “an ox going to the slaughter.”
Christiana is a slim, healthy woman who was raised on nutritious meals. When she goes off to college, however, she encounters the university dining scene. She had never eaten french fries before, but, boy, are they so tasty! Unlimited ice cream! Buffet lines of fried chicken and burgers! The first few weeks of this new diet has caused a little waistline tightness, but she thinks, It’s no big deal; I still eat my salads, she reassures herself. Then, after the semester is over, her parents are mortified to see their now hefty daughter plodding down the airport return gate.