The Spirit Empowered Life Series

The Spirit-Empowered Life

Acts 9:32-43

Pastor Allan H. Kircher

Introduction

Someone has said that your talk talks and your walk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks!

We know what it’s like not to be able to listen to what someone says because their lives do not back it up.

• Nothing can be worse/seeing some talk the talk..

• Then seeing them stumble and bumble outside the church.

And there are those people that the more I know about them the more I respect them.

• They are real and genuine.

• The more that you know about their walk, the more that you want to listen to their talk.

This is why Paul told Timothy to watch his life and doctrine closely.

• It is vital for all Christians, not just preachers to make sure we are living out our faith in Jesus Christ for the glory of God!

• We are not going to live perfectly, but we can choose to live genuinely.

• Our lives must illustrate the Gospel's power to change people! This is no small task!

Been studying the book of Acts for some time and are in the process of going through the 9thChapter,

• Conversion/transformation/Saul of Tarsus into Apostle Paul.

* Now we're/study about the man Peter.

* Peter is a fascinating, fascinating disciple/we all are richer because of his life.

I've entitled this passage, the spirit empowered life.

* Help us focus on the very basic principles that are exhibited in the spirit empowered life of Peter.

* Here we don't see Peter like we have in the past chapters of Acts preaching to great crowds of thousands.

* We see him kind of isolated with individuals.

* Some tremendous principles just kind of ooze out of the text. So shall we look at Acts 9:32-43 thru our visual Bible.

First/see Apostle Peter/all of his pre-Pentecost weaknesses

• all the failures that help us to brand him as the apostle with the foot shaped mouth,

• Finally after Pentecost, got his foot out of it and really began to speak for God.

• He really was fired up in every sense of the word.

• His life becomes the dominate theme in the first 12 Chapters of Acts. From Chapter 13 to 28, Paul dominates the picture.

But here Peter dominates. And everything that we saw in terms of failure at the beginning in the gospel sort of passes away with the energizing of the Holy Spirit.

• We see this in our own life don’t we.

• We stumble and fall, have failures,

But at some point we finally realize God really is real…He’s moving..and working in our lives.

• Then we become energized not looking back

• We see a dynamic and powerful apostle who not only is the leader of the church/leader of the other apostles.

• He now is effective/genuine here in the book of Acts.

We learn both sides of living the Christian life from Peter

• How not to do it in the gospels and how to do it in the book of Acts.

As we look at Peter's life there are so many principles of a spirit empowered life that we can find.

I. Begin with some personal qualifications

Before you can have a spirit empowered life as Peter does in Acts 9, there must be certain things that you possess personally.

• Before you have an impact on someone, you have to have something going on in you….

• We see Peter’s heart unbarred in a very direct way.

He gives us four things that really qualified him to have a spirit empowered life.

First….Personal concern. Let’s look at 2 Peter 2:12.

Verse 12, "So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have."

• Peter concerned for those to whom he ministers.

• He cares about them.

• He is not satisfied to teach.

• He is satisfied that they learn, and there's a big difference.

You’ve not done/job when you communicated the truth.

• Done the job when somebody else has learned it so that they can reproduce it.

And Peter says, I want you to know this.

• It’s not that you haven't heard it before;

• it's that I don't want you to forget it

• So I'm going to remind you and remind you and remind you.

He has a tremendous personal concern.

Before anybody has spirit empowered life, they have to care about people and presented the Gospel.

* not that they presented it well,

* Not that they got it off, that they came off looking good,

* But that somebody learned what it was they were saying.

And Peter had that personal concern.