Hosanna Restoration Church

Acts chapter four is a great account of how the power of God stirs things up! Peter and John walked by a crippled man and in the name of Jesus the man was healed. This of course excited the man and he went leaping and praising God and in turn it got a lot of the other people around excited as well. Once the word got to the religious leaders it was another story. For some reason they always got bothered when people we excited about God. Ultimately they arrested Peter and John and told them not to do things like that anymore. There response was to ask the religious leaders who they thought God would prefer that they listen to; and with that they headed back to report all that had gone on.

Once Peter and John shared the story, all of the other believers got excited and they prayed that God would empower them to preach with boldness and asked that God send more miracles! God must have loved the prayer because the whole building shook and they were filled with boldness.

It seems there was another powerful thing that took place, which may well be the source of power for the church around the world. You realize of course that we are the church. The people make up the body of Christ. We are the people of His pasture; we are the sheep of His hand.

Verse 32 says that all the believers were of one heart and mind. We are told that they no longer considered what they owned to be their own. They shared everything they had. Oh my, what will we do with scripture like this? First, don’t run from it! Don’t rush over it. Don’t try to relegate it to another time. Why not just ask God to help us apply this to our individual lives and see what role we each play in the whole body of Christ.

Rather than fearing what it could cost us, let’s look at what it says. Something about this touch of God changed the way they looked at things. Suddenly they did not see ownership as the sole purpose of their lives. Talk about something powerful. There is great freedom in no longer having to cling to everything while at the same time trying grab everything else we can. Remember, there is nothing wrong with having stuff as long as the stuff does not have us.

The point here is that they were free to share everything. I think it was because they became aware of the fact that God gave everything they had to them in the first place and that they could trust Him to replace anything they really needed to have back. As result of this move in their lives, there was a powerful witness to the resurrection life that is in Jesus Christ. And the greatest result of all was that God’s great favor was upon them all. There is no better place we can be in this world that in the favor of God.