The Power that Changes the World

The book of Acts traces the birth of the early church from its small, inauspicious beginnings to Paul’s arrival in Rome. As Jesus predicted, the kingdom of God started small, but the power of God is still transforming and changing broken people and places. Jesus is still with us, still at work, writing a new history that moves the lives of people in every place to bring heaven to earth until that last great day when he returns.  

In Acts: The Power that Changes the World, Howard Brown shows how the power that God unleashed at Pentecost is still at work in God’s people today, changing people and the world from the inside out. Through this twelve-lesson study of the story of the early church, readers will be encouraged, challenged, and empowered to live out God’s story in their lives and in their world.

“The book of Acts shows a people and a God who, well, act. They act unlike anyone else the world has ever known. Acts shows God making history, unfolding it with his people, his power, and his personal involvement. And it is our family history if we are believers. It helps us know how we should act and how God is acting in us,” Brown explains.

In this interview with Brown, we talk to him more about his study.

Q: Introduce us to your study of Acts and share how the biblical book is our family history.

The book of Acts is like the opening scene of the present age of God’s saving and transformative activity in the world. It is the start of an epic adventure that continues today in the lives of believers and the church. Acts is the origin story of the church and characterizes its peculiar nature and composition. God will find, go to, and reach a broken, diverse group of people and bring them together as an adopted, eternal family through one Lord—Jesus Christ.

Q: What are the three things that Acts teaches about the design of God’s church that are good reminders for us today, especially when it comes to living out our lives as Christians?

God’s design his church is about three things. The first is contract. The sign of accepting Jesus was submis­sion and commitment to the faith and to the faithful. In the Greek world, you might show your commitment to a benefactor or employer by receiving a mark like a piercing or tattoo. Or your commitment might be to a school or philosophy whose teachers you followed. Also, the people you welcomed into your house and ate with declared deep social commitments.

Acts shows the believers doing all of this. As those contracted through the blood of Jesus to be his, God’s people vowed commitment to each other. They bore the common mark of baptism, and they kept the ceremony of belonging—breaking the bread and saying the prayers. They followed their leaders’ teaching, and they shared their food and houses with each other. They committed not only to the Lord Jesus, the great benefactor and philosopher of the church, but to the church itself. They submitted their identities and lives to it. The Holy Spirit made a noun out of the verb of what God was doing in the hearts of his people.

Second, the church calls for necessary contact. It means being in a common place as a common people. “All who believed were together and had all things in common” (2:44). There were no levels of entry or VIP sections. The church was for any who believed in Jesus, regardless of money, age, nationality, former religion, class, or ethnicity. Notice how there were no private worship places. It was all about doing the faith together, touching and smelling and seeing each other.

But open-to-all does not mean a free-for-all party. Let’s say you are invited to my house. You are welcome to come the way you are. But if you come, you will be called to a common meal of various meats, barbeque sauces, and music that I have chosen. In the same way, church is not about a bunch of individual, personal encounters with God. It is about all of us coming to the same encounter with the same Savior through his common gifts: the bread, the prayers, the teachings, the worship. And we come not with our critiques and preferences, but “with glad and generous hearts” (2:46).

Third, this is possible because the church is built on gospel content. The church is a place where God is at work through the message. Look how the whole thing started. Peter got up to preach the gospel. Three thousand people got saved and baptized and joined the church after hearing this message: You are sinners before God. You misunderstood and ignored Jesus. But Jesus died and rose again for you. He came to save you from your sins. He has been gracious and generous to you. He was kicked out of temples and synagogues so you could belong to the family of God, where you get all the grace and power he has for you.

Q: Why do you think it is so hard for us to be open about our faith and step out to serve Jesus? What can we learn from Stephen in Acts about being braver and bolder?

We are afraid of the felt risks of public belief in a God who is often rejected—we are afraid of shame, ruin, and abandonment. Stephen’s story is an example of what can happen in the life of a believer filled by the Holy Spirit’s passion and glory. We can be powerfully moved and used outside our natural, fearful responses to opposiiton into a supernatural faith and courage. We can pray that God would do that in our lives as he sees fit.

Q: Can you give us some examples on conversions from the book of Acts that are great illustrations of how anyone can come to faith? How should this inspire us today to share the gospel?

For those defined by a religious, moral, or national identity, the conversion of the apostle Paul comes to mind. We can offer freedom to those who are exhausted from keeping up appearances and who destroy and demean others for their sense of self-righteousness. Saul’s (Paul’s) conversion led to him reaching out and giving his life to those he once considered the lowest (the Gentiles). Therefore, we should be inspired by the gospel to reach those we would most naturally want to avoid or discount.

Q: You share a good analogy in one of the chapters that should stick with readers. How is the church like the bread pudding your mom used to make when you were a child?

As a kid, one of my favorite things my mom would make was bread pudding. I don’t mean the fancy stuff, but a poor man’s dessert. Mom would look in the refrigerator and freezer and on the counter, and she would find all sorts of bread. Some was new and soft and sweet from that morning’s breakfast. Some was old and hard and forgotten, and even a little moldy. She would take it all and pour cream on it, and add some eggs. She would carefully mush it up until it became a bread sludge. She would then add some raisins in it or maybe some fruit cocktail, and add sugar or cinnamon and put it under the heat of the oven and out came bread pudding—something made new, delicious and pleasing. It had been changed by the hands of a master chef and redeemer.

In making one church and one body out of many, God takes the hardened, the old, the new, the sweet, and the savory and softens each of us by his grace, melting and molding us in the same cruciform mold. The Lord seasons us with his gifts. He holds and binds us together by the power of his love as we go through the sanctifying crucible of suffering in this world. This motley crew of misshapen lives is made sweet and one to and by him.

Q: Paul preached in many areas where educated people believed in false gods—a phenomenon not unlike our world and culture today. What can we learn from Paul when it comes to engaging those who think they have it all figured out and are wiser than Christians?

It is easy to confuse intelligence with wisdom. Jesus is wisdom personified and incarnated. When engaging others with the story of Jesus, share the simple message of the gospel and offer the testimony of what he means to us and is doing in our lives, it fills an area and gap that intelligence and human brilliance have not fully comprehended. The knowledge of Jesus gets underneath the veneer of confidence of human intellect. The gospel at work in the lives and testimony of believers forces the world to ask questions that the God of the Bible alone can give comfort and answer.

Q: What are some of the pitfalls we should avoid when sharing our testimony?

We should not assume that the dramatic and sordid details within our testimony will make the difference. Our testimony is way more about God’s grace than about our mess. We are also tempted to make ourselves the hero of our story when Jesus is the leading and main character in our redemption tale. Finally, we should avoid putting a triumphant, happy ending or “bow” on our stories. God’s work does not have to be presented as finished, and things don’t have to be solved, figured out, or right to share evidence of God at work in our lives. Your testimony might be in the middle of the saga of Jesus’s continuing and wonderful work in you and me.

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