{"id":21547,"date":"2022-05-13T22:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-05-14T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/acts_23_12-22-copy\/"},"modified":"2022-05-03T20:39:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T03:39:16","slug":"acts_23_23-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/acts_23_23-35\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are God\u2019s Love Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p><strong>Acts\u00a0 23:23-35\u00a0 \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Acts+23%3A23-35&amp;version=NIV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-21549 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/22-0514.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/22-0514.jpg 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/22-0514-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hi\u00a0 GAMErs!<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Today\u2019s passage is Acts 23:23-35.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Acts 23:23-35 (NIV)<\/strong><br \/>\n<sup>23\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Then he called two of his centurions and ordered them, &#8220;Get ready a detachment of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go to Caesarea at nine tonight.<br \/>\n<sup>24\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Provide mounts for Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.&#8221;<br \/>\n<sup>25\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0He wrote a letter as follows:<br \/>\n<sup>26\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Claudius Lysias, To His Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings.<br \/>\n<sup>27\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen.<br \/>\n<sup>28\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin.<br \/>\n<sup>29\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment.<br \/>\n<sup>30\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0When I was informed of a plot to be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once. I also ordered his accusers to present to you their case against him.<br \/>\n<sup>31\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0So the soldiers, carrying out their orders, took Paul with them during the night and brought him as far as Antipatris.<br \/>\n<sup>32\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0The next day they let the cavalry go on with him, while they returned to the barracks.<br \/>\n<sup>33\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0When the cavalry arrived in Caesarea, they delivered the letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him.<br \/>\n<sup>34\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0The governor read the letter and asked what province he was from. Learning that he was from Cilicia,<br \/>\n<sup>35\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0he said, &#8220;I will hear your case when your accusers get here.&#8221; Then he ordered that Paul be kept under guard in Herod&#8217;s palace.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On verses 23-35:\u00a0 Claudius Lysius is the name of the Roman commander was has been in custody of Paul.\u00a0 With a huge detachment of soldiers, horsemen and spearmen to protect Paul and a formal letter explaining the situation, the Roman commander Lysius sends Paul to Felix, the governor of Judea, located in Caesarea, so that Paul can be tried in court there.\u00a0 Governor Felix reads Lysius\u2019 letter and decides that since Paul is from Cilicia, which was within Felix\u2019s jurisdiction, Felix would hear Paul\u2019s case.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Just as commander Lysius sent a letter to governor Felix to introduce Paul to him, so God sends us like a letter to the people around us to introduce Jesus to them.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As Paul himself would say about his church in Corinth, \u201c<em>You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.\u201d (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Because you may be the closest thing to a Bible that some of your friends ever read, may your life read like a love letter from God to the people around you.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It reminds me of a song I wrote a while back called \u201cI Respond\u201d.\u00a0 The lyrics go like this:<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>I Respond<\/u><\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a9 J.B. Lim<\/p>\n<p><em>I see a vision bigger than the way I\u2019ve been living<br \/>\nI hear Your heartbeat beating out of love for the world<br \/>\nI see a people, people who desperately need You<br \/>\nSo let me be, Lord, an instrument to make You known<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I see a picture painted in the pages of Your Word<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><em>A love letter sent to everyone in the world<br \/>\nAnd You have written Your song of love in my heart now<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Not with a chisel, but with the Spirit of God<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I respond to Your call to be a light on earth<br \/>\nI respond to Your heart that beats for all the world<br \/>\nFor You are worthy, for You are worthy of my life<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi\u00a0 GAMErs!<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s passage is Acts 23:23-35.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n<p>Acts 23:23-35 (NIV)<br \/>\n23\u00a0\u00a0Then he called two of his centurions and ordered them, &#8220;Get ready a detachment of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go to Caesarea at nine tonight.<br \/>\n24\u00a0\u00a0Provide mounts for Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.&#8221;<br \/>\n25\u00a0\u00a0He wrote a letter as follows:<br \/>\n26\u00a0\u00a0Claudius Lysias, To His Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings&#8230;&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>On verses 23-35:\u00a0 Claudius Lysius is the name of the Roman commander was has been in custody of Paul.\u00a0 With a huge detachment of soldiers, horsemen and spearmen to protect Paul and a formal letter explaining the situation, the Roman commander Lysius sends Paul to Felix, the governor of Judea, located in Caesarea, so that Paul can be tried in court there.\u00a0 Governor Felix reads Lysius\u2019 letter and decides that since Paul is from Cilicia, which was within Felix\u2019s jurisdiction, Felix would hear Paul\u2019s case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21547"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21550,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547\/revisions\/21550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}