Archive for category: GAMEtime Sharing

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Acts 19:1-12.  As usual, I encourage you to read the passage yourself first and see what you can glean with the Holy Spirit’s help, then read the GAME sharing below.  Let’s go! 

Acts 19:1-7 (NIV)
1  While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples
2  and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3  So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism,” they replied.
4  Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”
5  On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.
6  When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.
7  There were about twelve men in all.
 
On verses 1-7:  Here Apollos and Paul end up switching places.  Apollos goes to Corinth and Paul goes to Ephesus.  In Ephesus Paul finds 12 men who had received “John’s baptism”, which is probably referring to a baptism where the person being baptized says, “I am turning from my sins and I wait for God’s Messiah to come”. 

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Acts 18:1-11.  As usual, I encourage you to read the passage yourself first and see what you can glean with the Holy Spirit’s help, then read the GAME sharing below.  Let’s go! 

Acts 18:1-3 (NIV)
1  After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
2  There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them,
3  and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.
 
On verses 1-3:  Paul, Aquila and Priscilla had a lot in common: they had all recently moved to Corinth (Paul from Athens, Aquila and Priscilla from Rome); they were all tentmakers; they were all Jewish by heritage; and there is a good chance that Aquila and Priscilla were already Christians by the time they met Paul.  With so much in common, it made sense to them to go into business together.  

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Acts 17:1-15.  As usual, I encourage you to read the passage yourself first and see what you can glean with the Holy Spirit’s help, then read the GAME sharing below.  Let’s go!

Acts 17:1-9 (NIV)

When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

The second half of the book of Acts is showing us these great pictures of God’s salvation. Acts 17 is going to show how God is saving his people and the kind of heart needed to respond. You may remember that Jesus told a parable that is the parable of the sower in Mark 4. The parable pictures a sower scattering seed across all kinds of different soils. Jesus explains that the parable as the sower sowing the word and the different soils as the different responses that happen from proclaiming the message of God (cf. Mark 4:14). So the parable is about considering if your life is guided by God’s word.

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Acts 16:1-12.  As usual, I encourage you to read the passage yourself first and see what you can glean with the Holy Spirit’s help, then read the GAME sharing below.  Let’s go! 

Acts 16:1-3 (NIV)
1  He came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek.
2  The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him.
3  Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
 
On verses 1-3: Lystra was the city where Paul experienced some of the worst persecution of his life.  He was stoned and almost killed in Lystra (Acts 14:19).  Yet Paul never gave up on Lystra and continued to reach and care for the believers there.  Eventually in Lystra Paul would meet Timothy, who would become one of his dearest sons in the faith and one of his most important teammates.  It goes to show that when you don’t give up on the place God has called you to, great things will happen eventually.  You just need to last long enough to see it.

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage, Acts 15:13-29, is not the easiest passage in Acts to interpret, but there are some powerful lessons for those willing to dig deeper.  As usual, I encourage you to read the passage yourself first and see what you can glean with the Holy Spirit’s help, then read the GAME sharing below.  Let’s go! 

Acts 15:13-18 (NIV)
13  When they finished, James spoke up: “Brothers, listen to me.
14  Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself.
15  The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
16  “‘After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it,
17  that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’
18  that have been known for ages.
 
On verses 13-18:  James, the brother of Jesus and a leader in the church in Jerusalem, continues the discussion about whether Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians should be subject to the law of Moses including Jewish requirements like circumcision.  James acknowledges what Peter had just shared in verses 7 to 11, how Peter had personally seen God choosing Gentile Christians and giving them His Holy Spirit as much as He did Jewish Christians.  While Peter referred to his own personal experience to support the idea that God had chosen believers from among the Gentiles as well, James refers to Scripture, quoting Amos 9:11-12 and showing that there is Scriptural support for the same idea that God had chosen believers from among the Gentiles.