Reasonable Service

What an abused statement!!! This is the best way to get people to get on board with what you are doing. If you want people to support you or to believe what you are doing is what you should be doing all you have to say is it is “God’s will.”

This happened in Acts chapter 5 with Ananias and Sapphira. I love what Frank Stagg has to say about this story. He says the greater sin was not in lying to the Holy Spirit but in “falsifying” the Holy Spirit. In other words they sold the possession and then agreed to lie about how much they sold it for. Then they brought that money and laid it at the apostle’s feet. As they brought it forward they brought it and gave it as if the Holy Spirit was the one that led them to give that amount of money.

Isn’t this what many of us are guilty of? We do things in front of people under the pretense that we are doing exactly what the Holy Spirit would have us to do when we know in our hearts that God has laid more or has laid something completely different on our hearts.

This was a serious sin in that day and it is still a serious sin today. It ended both of their lives that day. Lesson - don’t be a fake. If God hasn’t lead you to do what you are doing don’t say He has. This is serious. You wouldn’t like it if someone was going around telling other people that you put them up to doing something that you really had nothing to do with… so don’t do it to God.

We are currently in Anniston, Alabama. Yesterday morning we were at Saks Baptist Church and then in the evening we were with Pastor Eric Snider and White Plains Baptist Church.

After the service at White Plains Pastor Snider suggested to the church that they help us in turning the liquor store that we want to buy into a church building. He said he loves buying liquor stores and making churches out of them:) That sounds pretty good! Thank you White Plains we really appreciate your help!

I thought I would just write out a few of the things I thought were interesting from a book I have read recently entitled A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA by Elizabeth Isichei.

Page 35 reading about Tertullian the author writes,

Tertullian was a Puritan. He believed Christians should be a gathered remnant, avoiding all the corruption of a tainted world. Women should avoid cosmetics, elaborate hairstylesk, and fine clothing: ‘That which He Himself has not produced is not pleasing to God, unless he was unable to order sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue fleeces.’

The author wrote of a man named Lactantius, an African, and student of Arnobius. He was a denouncer of the injustices by which empires were created according to the author. He asked the question

“‘What are the interests of our country, but the inconveniences of another state or nation?”

On page 45 the author states,

“The modern phase of missionary activity in Africa, and elsewhere, began with the foundation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792.”

Another interesting point the author brings out is that missionaries from c. 1500 to c. 1800 brought a Christianity to Africa that was inseperable from their own cultural inheritance, and their converts acquired many cultural traits that had nothing to do with religion.

This among other reasons is why there are African independent churches today. The Africans grew tired of being forced to forsake their culture, even when it did not violate a Biblical principle, just because that was the way Christianity was lived out in western culture.

Anyways I will not overload for now but if you get a chance and you are interested in the history of Christianity in Africa you might want to get this book.