After they received the Holy Spirit, the apostles were exuberant. One day, in the temple while they prayed, Peter and John healed a lame man (Acts 3:1-10) and started to excitedly share about Jesus.
They just saw a guy come back from the dead AND they received the Holy Spirit. They couldn’t stop talking about it to anyone who would listen. To top it off, they healed a lame guy. The evidence of what they were talking about showed itself right before them.
The temple authorities rushed to arrest them to stem the gathering interest. It sounded like sorcery and blasphemy. Better to protect everyone from hearing it! However, with the formerly lame man right there and with the crowd size, there wasn’t much they could do. There was too much interest. So, a night in jail and a warning is all the two received.
And to this warning, the two replied, “Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)
They couldn’t stop. How could they, after what they saw?
I’ve long believed that the real crisis in the church is not education, or doctrinal discipline. The text says that Peter and John were uneducated (Acts. 4:13) and they couldn’t stop preaching. No, the real crisis is the lack of encounter with Christ. Manufactured spiritual services, and expectantly dull rote programming, do not make a lot of room for living encounter. And the thing about God is, once you encounter Him, you can’t STOP sharing it with others.
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