3,2,1 Action!

"The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach,

until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen."
Acts 1:1-2

I will always remember what I felt like when I was first saved. I can remember saying to myself "This is great! I'm not going to hell!...now what?". I think the book of Acts starts off the way it does to address that very question of "Now what?". In verse 2 Luke writes " after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.". The first thing we should identify is that the Lord had given orders. He didn't leave this world without telling His people exactly what He desired for them to do but rather gave them clear instructions. Jesus had lived life with His disciples teaching them through His actions and giving them a picture of what is was to truly follow Him. In the very last chapter of Matthew we find these words of Jesus, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations..". This is command of every believer! Not just Pastors and not just people in ministry but all believers! 

When Jesus was crucified some of the disciples went back to what they knew. We find Peter and he is back to fishing and that's the very tendency we have as people when we become believers. My nature when I was saved was now trying to fit God into the life I already had but that is not what the Lord is looking for at all! He's looking for us to fit our lives around who He is and our relationship with Him! Even Francis Chan remembers back when he was first saved, the thing he prayed to God about was not losing any of his friends now that he was a Christian. See we have a default setting of just going back to whats familiar to us but we are called to a completely different life. Our lives should look radically different from when we had no idea who Jesus was compared to calling Him "Lord, Lord". Paul using the analogy in Ephesians of the difference is as big as being dead and then being alive. That's as different as something can be when you really stop and think about it and that's the picture Luke is painting to start of the book.

Jesus did not leave this earth without giving His marching orders to His people in a very clear way.