Mission & Ascension of Jesus

The book of Acts is a sequel to the book of Luke and recounts the story, struggle and success of the gospel message going forth: under the plan of God, centered on King Jesus and empowered by the presence of the Spirit. It is full of miracles and wonders: God showing up in supernatural ways as the Gospel makes its way from Jerusalem to Rome. Within 30 years of Jesus ascension, the gospel traveled from Jerusalem to Rome.

It is the story of the disciples and the followers of Jesus being empowered by the Holy Spirit to witness to the whole world.

Notes:

• “The point of the resurrection is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it. What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.” N.T. Wright
• “Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.” N.T. Wright