York Alliance Church Message Podcast

Just as baptism played a prominent role in the early church, the sacrament of baptism is a key part of our journey with Jesus. The proclamation of baptism is a beautiful declaration of the gospel and one that every follower of Jesus is called to enact. The question we must ask is the one that came from the Ethiopian eunuch: "Why shouldn't I be baptized?"

For too many of us, our default view of the Holy Spirit is that of a mysterious power or force. However, the Bible is clear that the Spirit is a person who indwells followers of Jesus. It's by recognizing the person of the Holy Spirit that we begin to walk in step with Him rather than seek to use His power for our own ends.

The story of the first martyr in the early church is a sober reminder to us that standing up for Jesus can have a significant cost. The question of whether or not we would be willing to die for Jesus as Stephen did, while difficult, is much more straightforward. The challenging question we each must face is whether or not we are willing to live for Him.

There is a sacred call to serve Jesus, and there is great diversity to that calling. The Kingdom is populated with many different kinds of people with many different gifts. However, we're all called to use what we have to serve and we're all called to proclaim the gospel through our words and deeds.

Movements that come from God will ultimately endure, regardless of the opposition. We are invited to move with God through the power of the Holy Spirit but, even when we don't, His Spirit continues to achieve His purposes. Each of us must ask the question: Am I moving with God, opposing Him, or standing on the sidelines?

As we've seen throughout the early chapters of Acts, the Holy Spirit is a beautiful gift bringing the peace and direction that Jesus promised to His disciples. However, the Spirit also marks the holiness of God, and the tragedy of Acts 5 is a reminder to us that the presence of God is not to be taken for granted.

Our response in the face of threats and danger tells us something about the depth of our faith. When the early disciples faced persecution, they prayed in a remarkable way, trusting God to use them even more. But it didn't end there—their prayer then led to lives that witnessed the presence of Jesus in them.

While there is certainly a place for formal learning and study, they are not the only way to learn. In fact, when growing in Christ, there's no substitute to actually being with Him. What was notable about the disciples to the people around them was that they had been with Jesus, and the same thing should be true for us today.

Being generous with our lives is a result of emphasizing the right values in our day to day lives and allowing the generosity of heart to naturally flow.

We live in a world that emphasizes scarcity, which often moves us toward greed, materialism and discontent. Jesus, however, taught that generosity is the key to both being content and living in freedom. We can only live this way if we shift our perspective away from scarcity towards the abundance of God.