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Acts 3:1-10 is a vignette (a brief descriptive scene/passage/sketch) that has multiple purposes.  It begins to example a handful of the descriptors that were detailed in Acts 2:42-47.  It also sets up what remains of chapter 3 (and even on through chapter 4 and 5), providing setting, context, and event details.  This passage is about the healing of a lame man, but it about much more that the healing of a lame man.

For our applicational thoughts this week, I want to take Pastor’s final exhortations and meditate on them this week.  More than that, I want to start taking practical steps of faith.  We can see Peter and John’s confidence in Jesus Christ.  They took an opportunity that was put before them, recognizing their responsibility in Christ Jesus.  These two apostles were ready, willing, and able to “give what they did have…in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth”. 

How ready, willing, and able am I to give what I likewise have been given in Christ??  As a redeemed child of God, I am now an ambassador of the gospel and a minister of reconciliation.  What grace has been given me is meant to flow through me to others.  My Heavenly Father has equipped me with his Holy Spirit and his Holy Word.  He has placed me in a local church family to be supported by others standing firm and striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.

This is all true of you as well!  I pray that you will also pick up the challenge this week to meditate on these things and then begin to take practical steps of responsibility with what you have been given by God in Jesus Christ.  There are others who need what we have been graciously given.  May we not be misers but givers, so that God may be praised!