God chooses to use human agency to expand His kingdom. In Matthew 2, Joseph, a human being just like us was given responsibility to protect and care for Mary and Jesus, and he chose to believe what God said and acted in faith.? The goal of our Christian lives isn’t to just to experience God’s love, but to be changed by that love and becoming an agent of change for the Kingdom! The Kingdom of God is here, are we going to be faithful agents of it, even if it costs us? Does our faith and believing loyalty in King Jesus give us the confidence to hear and believe warnings that speak against popular opinion?

After making Jesus our Lord, we are called to live and walk in Jesus. To move. In order to keep moving, and growing in maturity in Jesus, Colossians 2 says we need to be rooted and built up, having a deep understanding and conviction of what is true and how we are called to live, and to live in gratitude which brings joy and growth. We walk through what being “established in the faith” and “abounding in gratitude” means and how it’s applies in our lives. And then we cover the traps that could prevent us from going where Jesus wants to take us.

John wraps up our series on Acts, speaking out of Acts 27 and 28. We see the difference between the motivations, actions, and impact of Paul (the new creation), and his presence, which brought freedom and life, in comparison with those of Jonah and Adam (the old creation), which brought chaos and death. We then connect the life-giving spirit Paul is the same life-giving spirit that we are given as new creations in Christ, and that we need to continue to grow into the life-giving image bearer we are created to be.

John takes us through Acts 25 and 26, and discusses how there are many narratives and not all are true. What matters more than narratives that sound good to us are narratives that are true. Because truth sets us free, even if it’s painful to process at first.

John walks us through Acts 24, and Paul’s interactions with Felix in Caesaria. We dive into how the main motivator for Paul’s decisions is the fear of the Lord which brings greater knowledge of reality, understanding, and wisdom. John also connects for us that when we value the things of God, we will hate evil, and show our love for God in our obedience to speak truth and reality to our world.