“When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Acts 1:6-8

When we focus on what we want to learn or what we want to do in church, we run the risk of missing what God wants us to learn and do.

Even in the moments before Jesus ascended back to heaven, the disciples were still focusing on the aspects of a physical kingdom of God here on earth. This misplaced focus caused them to miss simple instructions from Jesus to return to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of God which was the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Had they listened to Jesus more closely, it seems they may have been asking what it will be like to be “baptized with fire” and what the gift of the Holy Ghost really meant.

The fact is, they had too small of a view of what God had planned for them. They understood that they were going to go into all the world and preach the gospel, what they didn’t know is they would be able to speak in languages and do other miracles that would greatly assist in that effort. 

This lesson teaches us to study our Bible even more. We may feel led by God to do something but we need to look closely at His word to see how we are to do any particular task.

Further, we need to understand that we now have the gift of the New Testament written by the Apostles and the gift of the church to help us in our understanding (Ephesians 4:11-16). 

God’s design is for us to grow upon the foundation laid by the Apostles (Ephesians 2:20) and to learn, grow, and act along with our local body of believers – the church.

Consider the seven churches of Asia mentioned in Revelation. God had specific messages for each of those churches about what they should know and how they should act. He sent those messages to the angel (pastor) of each church so that he could preach it to that specific congregation.

God has given His children a zeal to love and to serve. He has also given us instruction in the Bible of how we ought to focus that zeal and love for the further glory of His grace and the prosperity of His kingdom.

This article is Blog #3 in the series “A Walk Through Acts.”