Today's daily lesson is from Acts chapter 8 verses 17 through 20:
17 Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. 18 Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, 19 saying, "Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." 20 But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!"
There is an old saying that the best things in life are free.
On Monday I wrote about a really incredible thing that happened after church on Sunday between me and a sick, and then mostly unconscious young man and his mother. I had preached that morning about a bleeding woman holding on to the thread of Jesus' prayer shawl tassel, and then I show up at the hospital and the mom, without provocation,is talking about it being the touch of his prayer shawl tassel that most comforts her boy. I said, "I think I am going to send you a copy of today's sermon."
Now that kind of experience is just a God-thing. You can't create it; and you certainly can't buy it. You can wish for it; but it can only come as a gift.
The more we are in tune with God, the more closely we are connected, and the more open we are to God's Spirit moving in and through us then the more God-things happen. But we can't buy them or manufacture them or wish, wish, wish for them to happen.
It's a grace thing; which means by definition it cannot be bought but only given and received.
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