“Who doesn’t like a good story? Stories have a way of drawing us into their world. They fill our minds with visions of courage, bravery, and heroism. We share the victories, feel the defeats, and rejoice in the resurgence of the hero. A good story envelops us so that we ultimately learn not just about the players in the story, but ourselves as well.
Acts is not just a good story; it’s a true story written by a physician, missionary, and historian named Luke. He begins the story of Acts with the greatest event in the history of the world–the Resurrection of Jesus. Then, like a master storyteller, Luke fills the narrative with reports of adventure, arrests, imprisonments, beatings, riots, narrow escapes, a shipwreck, trial scenes, and rescues. Ultimately, Luke writes Acts as a thrilling historical narrative drawing us into the explosive growth of the gospel in the Early Church.
Like any good story, Acts fills our minds with ideals of courage, bravery, and heroism. We see Peter the Denier become Peter the Evangelist. We see Paul the Murderer transformed into Paul the Missionary. We see nameless Christians taking the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. We are drawn into their story and this gives us hope that we might have some part in the Story as well.
Our hope for our study of Acts is that God would give us a greater vision for how the Holy Spirit might empower us to play our parts well in his Grand Story–God’s Mission to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
