(Clip) We Abandon Ourselves

One thing we need to understand is that the early church devoted themselves for a reason. They knew that he died on a cross. They knew that without any shadow of a doubt.

And the reality is that everybody who was crucified, there was never anybody who ever got off the cross alive. And so there was no maybe of him being dead. He was absolutely dead.

He was thoroughly, completely dead. There was no maybes of it. And they knew the reality of his resurrection.

It was an absolute. They knew he was dead and they knew three days later he rose again from the dead. Because they were so thoroughly convinced of who Jesus was.

So thoroughly convinced of the events that took place. So thoroughly convinced of his death, of his resurrection, and of his ascension to the right hand of the Father. And so I want to look at the idea of devotion because we have to really ask ourselves, are we devoted? We may think ourselves devoted by American standards, but are we devoted by biblical standards? Are we devoted according to what the book of Acts says? We say we want to see the book of Acts.

We say we want to see the signs and wonders. We want to see the miracles. But do we want to live the life that it took to produce that? We want the book of Acts, but do we want the lives that produce the book of Acts? The apostolic power will be withheld from us until the apostolic lifestyles are following us.

Today in our American culture, we end up thinking that we can give a half-hearted devotion. Or we think devotion a little thing that we go to a Bible bookstore, and we get this little devotion. We read it for five minutes, and we've done our duty for the day.

We pray a little prayer on the way to school or the way to work, and we've done our devotion, and it's over. But we have to understand devotion from a biblical standpoint is totally different. It is a lifestyle.

It is that you give yourself completely, absolutely, unequivocally, everything that you own, everything you desire, everything of your life, every hurt, every pain, every want, every ambition, that you yield it entirely, absolutely, completely, without reservation that you devote yourself completely to it. What did they devote themselves to? They said they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. What was the apostles' teaching? Putting it very simple, what the apostles taught is what they were taught from the Messiah, from the Savior.

They didn't go to the gospels and say, is this convenient? Is it going to prosper me? Is it going to bless me? Is it going to be comfortable? Do I like what it says? They came to it and said we will abandon ourselves to his word. We have to see how this works in our day and age, because our culture is pushing upon us to be a particular people, to dress a particular way, to act a particular way, to think a particular way, trying to force us to believe particular things. We have a culture screaming at us to accept ungodliness and make it a normal thing.

But how often is it that as a church we are compromising? Jesus made a statement in Luke 14. He said, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, this even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.