The Early ChurchVoorbeeld

The book of Acts reads like a novel - there are heroes, there are villains; people get murdered, run out of town, thrown in prison. There are riots, slanderous characters, shipwrecks and miracles. Throughout it all, we see two story arcs: the human perspective and the God perspective. These two storylines run in parallel to one another and yet are strikingly different, revealing a tension that cannot be ignored: how do we interpret current circumstances within the lens of God’s perspective? In the ‘human story arc’, God’s people experience hardship and suffering, displacement and confusion; while at the exact same time, the ‘God story arc’ reveals a completely different movement of events: the church grows, more people’s lives are being saved, and the gospel spreads. We’ve picked this Bible Engagement Plan exactly for those reasons. Oftentimes when things seem bleak, there is another storyline working just above our view. It is one of growth, of redemption, and of victory. The reading is broken up into four parts: The Early Church, Scattered, Growth, and The FInal Journey . Consider it like the four movements of a symphony or separate acts of a play; they work best when taken in sequence, but can also work as stand alone pieces. Our prayer is that by reading along, you would both see God’s redemptive storyline throughout the book of Acts as well as personally experience that hope that hovers just above our circumstances in the here and now. May you be richly blessed and encouraged, \- Sandals Church