{"id":10014,"date":"2021-12-31T06:37:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T12:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-acts-4\/"},"modified":"2021-12-28T14:56:54","modified_gmt":"2021-12-28T20:56:54","slug":"devotional-on-acts-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-acts-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Acts"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_15904\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15904\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935-640x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"1024\" class=\"size-large wp-image-15904\" srcset=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935-640x1024.jpg 640w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935-188x300.jpg 188w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935-768x1229.jpg 768w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935-960x1536.jpg 960w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/100_2935.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15904\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Mt Rainier National Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Pentecost 1b<\/p>\n<p>Acts 4: Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201csilver and gold have I none\u201d healing of the lame man gets the attention of everyone, including the religious leaders.  Peter and John are arrested for starting a riot, but the city has caught \u201cmiracle fever\u201d and the leaders are in danger of having a real riot on their hands if they don\u2019t let the \u201cmiracle workers\u201d go.  The disciples are seriously warned to stop talking about Jesus and then let go.  Victoriously, they return to the gathering of believers, telling all that has happened.  Knowing that these leaders don\u2019t make idle threats, the Church goes to prayer.  On one hand, they ask the Lord to deal with their threats.  On the other hand, they ask him to fill them with \u201cfearless confidence in preaching.\u201d  If the Lord will, then, they seek an easy path in proclaiming Jesus.  However, easy or not, they ask for boldness in telling about him.  Luke reports that as they pray there\u2019s a \u201cmini-Pentecost\u201d as the ground trembles and the Holy Spirit re-fills them.  Out the doors they go in Pentecostal power to tell the story of Jesus.  It may be that we go about this \u201ctelling\u201d business all wrong.  We tend to focus on the \u201cmake it easy for me\u201d part rather than the \u201cmake me bold\u201d part.   There\u2019s nothing wrong with asking the Lord to open the way, after all, that\u2019s what happens in this passage.  However, we might just see a more powerful display of the Holy Spirit in our lives if we backed it up by praying the \u201ceasy or not, make me more bold\u201d part of the prayer.<\/p>\n<p>Take Away: Maybe we lack boldness because we don\u2019t ask for it.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pentecost 1b Acts 4: Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message. The \u201csilver and gold have I none\u201d healing of the lame man gets the attention of everyone, including the religious leaders. Peter and John are arrested for starting a riot, but the city has caught \u201cmiracle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1485,1428],"tags":[1268,320,558,796,845,1212],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10014"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15905,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014\/revisions\/15905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}