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.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
Acts 4:5-13
On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.
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 this passage, Peter gave a “presentation” to the Jewish rulers. He had to give a testimony before the council concerning the ministry he had been doing. Peter might have been quite nervous, not sure what to say, worried about whether he could be clear, or if he would be persuasive. Perhaps, he, too, was so nervous that he could not even breathe!
But notice what the Bible says: “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them….” Because he was filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter was able to talk before the council. Interestingly enough, the Greek word for spirit is also used for breath, so you could say that the Holy Spirit was Peter’s breath in that moment. While Peter may have been so nervous he could barely breathe, the Holy Spirit became his breath, giving him the words to speak.
Do you ever worry about sharing your faith and testifying about Jesus to others, whether to an individual or a group of people? Do not worry because the Holy Spirit will be your breath, and He will be your thoughts, giving you the words to speak. Though your physical breath may be lost in the moment, trust that your spiritual breath will continue to flow. Remember the words of that old song, “This is the air I breathe.” That is the Holy Spirit. He is the air you breathe and you will never be breathless.
Prayer
Lord, thank You for Your Spirit! We would be lost without Your Spirit, but thank You that You have given us Your Spirit to dwell in us always. May we remember the power of Your Spirit, and that You are the one working in and through us. Have Your way, Lord!
Bible Reading for Today: Genesis 46
Lunch Break Study
Read Luke 12:11-12: And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.
Questions to Consider
- Why shouldn’t we be anxious when we need to defend our faith?
- How do we let the Spirit speak through us?
- Are there any situations in your own life where you need the Spirit to speak through you?
Notes
- We should be anxious if it were all up to us, but praise God that He gives us His Spirit to speak through us! So we need not be anxious when defending our faith, because the Spirit will speak through us.
- Unfortunately, there is no formula to this. Allowing the Spirit to speak through us is a matter of faith and trust – trusting that God is the One working through you. When our confidence is in ourselves, then we will have a difficult time hearing the Spirit, but when our confidence is in God, He will speak powerfully through us.
- Apply this to your life. Perhaps you want to share the gospel with a friend, but you are worried about it. Trust that God will speak through you in that moment. His Spirit is in you!
Evening Reflection
Tonight, take time to invite the Spirit to fill you. We need to be constantly filled by the Spirit, so pray that God will fill you once again so that in the hour of trial, He will take control of you and give you words to speak.
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.
Many of us grew up being taught that no sin is worse than any other – in the sense that hatred in heart and murder in body both played a part in nailing Jesus to the cross for the salvation of the world. But if you’re like me, there are times when you feel much worse about some of your transgressions and failures than others. There are ways we fall short that are bearable for us, we can carry our sins before God and receive grace and forgiveness. But there are those dark and painful moments when we fall so far short of God’s glory, our own expectations of ourselves, and the disconnect between who we should be and who we are appears so vast, that it’s utterly crippling and we find ourselves in despair.