The narrow way cannot be pursued as long as we are motivated by a desire to please the mass of men.

The Christian way is a narrow way, it can be lonely, it’s not popular. You’re not going to be hailed as a great leader of mighty moments, certainly not in the world, not if you live righteously.

We are righteous in Christ, indigenous, at home. Now we must become what we are, the pilgrim must make progress.

Where is God? There are highly public catastrophes. Terrorists fly airplanes into the World Trade towers and into the Pentagon. A tsunami of gigantic proportions, caused by shifting plates in the ocean floor off the coast of Aceh in northwest Indonesia, causes horrific damage in several countries, and kills about 300,000 men, women, and children. […]

The people who had been favorable all of a sudden turned hostile and killed Stephen, which might indicate that God had accomplished His purpose for the moment. It seems that Stephen was used by God to get the church out of Jerusalem.

To be organized simply means that something functions in an ordered sequence, and the apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians said this: “Let all things be done decently and in order.” There’s got to be an organization within the organism. It’s a good thing your body functions in that way. It’s a good thing that the organism is organized.

When Christ ascended into heaven, it says in Ephesians 4:11, “his gifts were that some should be pastor-teachers.” This is an office distinct from the rest of the people in the church, because it says that the pastor-teachers are to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

I think it is very important for every one of you to think hard about what you would do if cultic terrorists confronted you on a plane etc, and before they blew it up offered to let everyone off who would say, “Jesus Christ is not my Savior and Lord.” The reason I think it is important to think about this is that thinking about your own death for Christ will help you live for Christ as you should.

nbelief is always the same regardless in what time frame it happens; it does not change at all. There was unbelief in the first century, and there is still unbelief today. Of all the modern fallacies, there is none quite so pathetic and so feeble as the fallacy of thinking that there is something new about unbelief.

Here in Acts we see the early Christian devotion to fellow Christians. The early Christian communalism depicted here testifies to the intimate concern Christians had for each other. There was so much love and concern one for another that there was a remarkable independence of any ensnarement to mere things. “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.”

God is the author of being and of life, and if you are not in connection with Him, then you really have nothing.

Anything done apart from God always ends in nothing.