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Time for a quick review of N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone (Part One):

Awesome.

Now, let me elaborate. What impressed me deeply about Wright’s commentary on Acts is his magisterial command of biblical narrative threads. He views the events of Pentecost and the apostolic journeys without ever losing sight of the Old Testament backdrop of prophecy and accumulated Jewish history. As a result, the reader gets a much deeper appreciation for the timing and gigantic significance of God’s actions.

In addition, N.T. Wright’s style is scholarly and warm at the same time. He shares brief anecdotes with each passage that transition into his focused commentary. It’s amazing that Wright can generate scores of these spot-on illustrations, most of them from his own life, but all the more so when his anecdotal approach is paired with the kind of sweeping analysis and wise commentary he supplies.

If you’re looking for a commentary on Acts that’s extremely informed, “provocative” in the scriptural kingdom sense, and devotional as well, this is it. N.T. Wright is accessible (in a C.S. Lewisian way), but without softening the impact of his remarkable theology jones. I’m very appreciative, as reading Acts for Everyone, Part 1 proved to be both inspiring and theology-shaping experience, sending me back to the book of Acts with new eyes. (I expect no drop-off in Part 2.)

*** N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone gets three of three stars–don’t miss it.

N.T. Wright makes the point that all God’s people are called to pray but apostolic leaders more so than the rest. He derives this from the passage in Acts where Peter, James, John, etc., appointed new leaders so that they, the apostles, could devote themselves to prayer and the teaching of God’s word.

This makes perfect sense. It’s an almost glaringly obvious assumption, like connecting two dots when they are the only ones on the page, they are gigantic, and they and are framed by flashing neon arrows. Blink, blink, blink: Apostles devote themselves to prayer -> That means prayer is a huge priority.

These days, church planters are often described in apostolic terms, as the dudes who will start new movements of people toward Jesus by preaching (and praying) in regions where the gospel previously made as much sense as a Burger King breakfast commercial.

This is sort of disquieting for a guy whose best prayer often seems to be, “GOD HELP US!”

Nevertheless, I am trying to work prayer into my life more, similar to the way you work chalk into your palms to get a better grip on your climbing surface, or spray Stickum Grip Spray on your hands so that you can throw down a really sick dunk. Prayer has a great deal to do with our ability to navigate reality accurately and find traction–conversing with God has this calming, gracious, strengthening effect.

Not to mention that, should he want to, God can answer our petitions with dramatic and immediate results, such as when he allowed KU to win the national championship.

So when I hit a patch of silence, I let it be for awhile and pray, rather than immediately blasting Shai Linne or Josh Ritter. Lindsay and I are taking a running start at praying together every night, and while we don’t have an unbroken record by any means, praying together has been immediately healthy and good. I also think it increases the likelihood that we’ll make out.

Ultimately, I’m trying to become a man who is open and sensitive to God’s spirit, aware of what’s going on in my heart–as opposed to an ignorant and cocky dude. For anyone called to plant a church, this seems like a biblical mandate.

My newest scheme is to read through Acts, which aside from being one of my favorite books of the Bible, is a great “church planting” book. I’m going to attempt to follow along in a couple commentaries as well: Ajith Fernando’s Acts and N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone (Parts 1 and 2). Here’s a great bit by N.T. Wright on the resurrection:

‘Heaven’ may well be our temporary home, after this present life; but the whole new world, united and transformed, is our eventual destination. Part of the point about Jesus’ resurrection is that it was the beginning of precisely that astonishing and world-shattering renewal. It wasn’t just that he happened to be alive again, as though by some quirk of previously unsuspected ‘nature,’ or by some extraordinary ‘miracle‘ in which God did the impossible just to show how powerful he was, death suddenly worked backwards in his particular case.

It was, rather, that because on the cross he had indeed dealt with the main force of evil, decay and death itself, the creative power of God, no longer thwarted as it had been by human rebellion, could at last burst forth and produce the beginning, the pilot project, of that joined-up heaven-and-earth reality which is God’s plan for the whole world.

Great point that the resurrection wasn’t merely a signature miracle. No, it’s our first and foremost example of what God does when “given” a free hand, unchecked by sin. The resurrection is what redemption looks like when the defenders have been left in the dust and there’s an open court in front of it (bear with me, it’s March). Eventually we’ll all experience this.