What if the story of the early church isn’t just history, but a blueprint for following Jesus today? The Acts Daily Devotional Podcast is a 141-day journey through the book of Acts in the Bible, hosted by Pastor Derek. Each short episode combines Scripture and practical teaching to help inspire your daily chair time with God, whether at home or on your drive to work. Starting April 26, discover how the Holy Spirit empowers ordinary people to advance the mission of Jesus from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
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Paul reached his conclusion and dropped a bombshell: "Everyone who believes is justified through him from everything that you could not be justified from through the law of Moses." The law could diagnose the disease but never cure it. Through Jesus, every sin is covered. Even the thirty-six transgressions Jewish law said were unforgivable. Justification: just as if I'd never sinned. An honorable discharge from God himself. But Paul didn't end with the offer. He ended with a warning from Habakkuk...
"But God." Two words that shift the entire narrative. The people of Jerusalem killed Jesus. But God raised him from the dead. Paul stacked eyewitness testimony alongside three Old Testament texts to build an airtight case: David died and decayed. Everyone can walk to his tomb. But the one God raised up did not decay. The resurrection isn't a feel-good epilogue to a story already written. It's the load-bearing wall of the entire gospel. In this episode, Paul drives home the claim that changes eve...
aul opened his first recorded missionary sermon not with Jesus but with Abraham. He walked the synagogue through centuries of Israel's story with one unmistakable emphasis: God is the subject of every verb. God chose. God led. God raised up. God gave. Eleven different actions, and God is behind all of them. Then Paul funneled the entire narrative from David straight to Jesus, skipping everything in between, and used John the Baptist as a bridge his audience already trusted. In this episode, we h...
John Mark went home. The journey ahead meant crossing the Taurus mountains, a treacherous stretch known for bandits and brutal conditions. Whatever drove Mark's decision, the team was now smaller. Paul and Barnabas pressed on to Pisidian Antioch, walked into a synagogue on the Sabbath, and waited. When the leaders offered the standard invitation for a visiting rabbi to speak, they had no idea what they were handing the microphone to. In this episode, we watch a leadership shift, a team loss, and...
Barnabas and Saul crossed to Cyprus and preached their way across the island with nothing dramatic to show for it. Then they reached Paphos and walked into a spiritual showdown. A sorcerer named Elymas tried to block the Roman governor from hearing the gospel. Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, called him exactly what he was and pronounced blindness on him. The governor believed. In this episode, we see Saul become Paul, the Gentile mission officially launches, and the gospel reaches into the ha...
Five leaders in Antioch: a Cypriot landowner, an African, a North African, a man raised in Herod's palace, and a reformed religious terrorist. They were worshiping and fasting when the Holy Spirit spoke: "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul." For twelve chapters, the gospel had been spreading reactively, pushed outward by persecution. Now, for the first time, the church sent missionaries on purpose. And they sent their two best leaders. In this episode, we witness one of the hinges of history. Th...
Herod put on a silver robe, stepped into the morning sun, and let a crowd call him a god. He didn't correct them. An angel struck him down, and he was eaten by worms. The man who had just been hailed as divine died in agony, consumed from within. Luke's reason is devastating in its simplicity: "because he did not give the glory to God." At the beginning of this chapter, James was dead, Peter was imprisoned, and Herod was powerful. At the end, Peter is free, Herod is dead, and the word of God is ...
Peter showed up at the door of a prayer meeting that had been begging God for his release. And they didn't believe it. A servant girl named Rhoda recognized his voice and was so overjoyed she forgot to open the gate. She ran back to tell everyone, and they told her she was out of her mind. Meanwhile, Peter kept knocking. In this episode, we discover one of the funniest scenes in the New Testament and one of the most honest. The heroes of the early church prayed all night for a miracle, and when ...
The episode explores Acts 12:6-11, detailing Peter's miraculous escape from prison just before his scheduled execution. Despite being heavily guarded, an angel awakens Peter, frees his chains, guides him past guards, and opens an iron gate, all while Peter is in a daze. The discussion emphasizes Peter's inexplicable peace and the crucial role of his obedience, demonstrating how divine power and human action collaborate in God's unfolding will.
Herod Agrippa executed James, the brother of John, with a sword. One sentence. No dramatic buildup. One of Jesus' inner circle, gone. When Herod saw it pleased the Jewish leaders, he arrested Peter too, throwing him into maximum security with sixteen soldiers standing guard. The same God who would soon deliver Peter allowed James to die. There's no explanation given. No theological justification offered. It's hard. It's supposed to be hard. But while Peter sat in chains, the church gathered in a...
A prophet named Agabus predicted a severe famine across the Roman world. The Antioch church heard the news and didn't panic, didn't hoard, didn't look out for themselves first. Their immediate instinct was to help the believers in Judea who would be hit hardest. Each person gave according to their ability. No pressure. No arm-twisting. Just grace-fueled generosity from people who understood they were part of something bigger than themselves. In this episode, a young Gentile congregation sends re...
The Jerusalem church, concerned by reports of Gentiles believing in Antioch, sent Barnabas to investigate. Barnabas, a man of encouragement, recognized God's grace at work and then wisely recruited Saul from Tarsus. Together, they spent a year teaching and building the multiethnic church in Antioch, where believers were first called "Christians."
The persecution that was supposed to destroy the church scattered its embers into dry tinder. Believers who fled Jerusalem after Stephen's death carried the gospel north to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, 300 miles from where they started. At first, they spoke only to Jews. But then some unnamed believers from Cyprus and Cyrene did something unprecedented: they started telling pagans about Jesus. No apostolic title. No formal training. No permission slip. Just ordinary people who decided the gos...
This episode details Peter's compelling defense before the Jerusalem church, presenting a layered case for God's clear intention to include Gentiles through the Holy Spirit. His rhetorical question silences critics, leading them to glorify God for extending repentance and life "even to the Gentiles." The discussion also explores the church's ongoing struggle to fully embrace God's unexpected movements.
Peter returned to Jerusalem expecting a welcome. He got a trial. "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them." The circumcision party wasn't interested in what happened to Cornelius's household. They went straight for the social offense: a Jewish man at a Gentile table. In this episode, we watch Peter respond with pastoral wisdom. He doesn't pull rank or get defensive. He just tells the story, step by step, including his own resistance. He wanted his critics to know he'd carried the same wa...
God didn't wait for the altar call. The moment Peter spoke the words "forgiveness of sins," the Holy Spirit fell on every Gentile in the room. The six Jewish believers who'd come with Peter were stunned. They watched it happen: tongues, worship, the unmistakable evidence of God's presence landing on uncircumcised people who had never set foot in a synagogue. It was the Gentile Pentecost, the third great outpouring in Acts, and it shattered the last ethnic barrier standing between the gospel and ...
"Now I truly understand that God doesn't show favoritism." Peter opened his mouth in a Roman centurion's living room and admitted, in real time, that he'd just figured something out. After a lifetime of assuming God had favorites, the fog finally lifted. What followed was the first full gospel sermon ever preached to a purely Gentile audience: Jesus is Lord of all, he went about doing good, they killed him on a tree, God raised him on the third day, and everyone who believes receives forgiveness...
After a thirty-mile journey, Peter arrived at Cornelius's door and faced a choice. He knew that stepping over that threshold meant answering for it back in Jerusalem. He stepped through anyway. Inside, a Roman centurion fell at his feet, and Peter pulled him up: "Stand up. I'm just a man." Then he named the elephant in the room, the centuries-old prohibition against Jews entering Gentile homes, and told them what God had done to bring him through that door. In this episode, two men from two diff...
While Peter stood on the rooftop trying to make sense of the vision, three men knocked at the gate below. Cornelius's messengers had been delayed, stopping to ask directions through the streets of Joppa. Had they arrived a few minutes earlier, Peter would have had no framework for why Gentile strangers were on his porch. Providence doesn't always look like a miracle. Sometimes it looks like getting a little lost on the way. In this episode, we watch God coordinate two men in two cities thirty mi...
Peter was hungry, praying on a rooftop in Joppa, when a sheet descended from heaven filled with animals no devout Jew would ever touch. A voice commanded: "Kill and eat." Peter refused. Three times the vision repeated. Three times God replied: "What I have made clean, do not call impure." But this was never really about food. In this episode, we discover that God was dismantling something Peter had carried his whole life: the assumption that some people are beyond the reach of grace. The last ti...
Thirty miles up the coast from Joppa, a Roman centurion named Cornelius was praying when an angel appeared with specific instructions: send for a man named Peter. Cornelius was devout, generous, and God-fearing, but he wasn't yet a follower of Jesus. His conversion would open the floodgates of the gospel to the entire Gentile world. In this episode, we see God orchestrating events in two cities simultaneously, preparing both the messenger and the audience for a collision that will reshape the ch...
The episode highlights Dorcas, a devoted disciple in Joppa known for her practical charity to widows. After her death, Peter is summoned, and mirroring Jesus's own miracles, he raises her, causing widespread belief in the Lord throughout the city. This powerful event also sets the stage for Peter to challenge his own preconceptions, staying with a "unclean" tanner, foreshadowing a broader, inclusive ministry. The narrative emphasizes the profound and lasting impact of quiet, ordinary faithfulness.
A man named Aeneas had been paralyzed and bedridden for eight years. 2,920 days of waking up unable to move. Then Peter walked in and said six words: "Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you." Not "I heal you." Jesus Christ. The source of the power was never in question. In this episode, we watch one healing turn into a regional awakening as the entire Sharon plain turned to the Lord. God often works through small beginnings to achieve large outcomes. One divine appointment became a tipping point. The pe...
After his conversion, Saul's powerful preaching in Damascus led to a plot to kill him, forcing an undignified escape. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, believers initially feared him due to his past persecutions. Barnabas, the 'Son of Encouragement,' risked his reputation to vouch for Saul, enabling his acceptance and continued ministry despite persistent opposition. The episode concludes by reflecting on the early church's growth and challenging listeners to emulate Barnabas by extending trust to others.
Ananias walked through the door and spoke the most unexpected word Saul had ever heard: "Brother." Three days earlier, Saul was hunting Christians. Now a Christian was calling him family. Scales fell from his eyes, and almost immediately the former persecutor began proving in the synagogues that Jesus is the Messiah. The same intellectual firepower that had driven his persecution was now deployed for the gospel. In this episode, we see the most dramatic transformation in the New Testament unfold...
God's next assignment for an ordinary disciple named Ananias sounded like a death wish: go find the man who's been arresting and killing Christians, lay hands on him, and welcome him into the family. Ananias pushed back. He had every reason to be afraid. But he brought his fear to God instead of letting it make the decision for him. In this episode, we meet one of the unsung heroes of the New Testament, a man whose courage changed the trajectory of the entire church. Without Ananias, the most pr...
This episode recounts Saul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, where his mission to persecute Christians was interrupted by a blinding encounter with the risen Jesus. Saul's entire worldview collapsed as he faced his spiritual blindness and received new direction, symbolizing that God's relentless grace is available to even the most hardened hearts and encourages personal reflection on areas of resistance.
The Ethiopian was reading Isaiah 53. Who is the prophet talking about? Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with that Scripture, told him the good news about Jesus. The suffering servant. The Lamb led to slaughter. Isaiah was pointing to Christ, and Philip connected the dots. They came to water and the Ethiopian said, Look, there is water. What would keep me from being baptized? As a eunuch, he had faced barriers his whole life. Now? Nothing kept him from belonging. They went down into the wat...
Samaria was exploding with new believers. Then an angel showed up with strange instructions. Leave this thriving city and go to a desert road. No explanation. Philip got up and went. He found a divine appointment. An Ethiopian official, treasurer to the queen, traveling home from Jerusalem. As a eunuch, he couldn't fully participate in temple worship. Yet there he sat, still reading Isaiah, still hungry for God. The Spirit whispered to Philip: go and join that chariot. Philip ran. He arrived at ...
News reached Jerusalem that Samaria had received the word of God. The apostles sent Peter and John to investigate. The Samaritans had believed and been baptized, but the Spirit had not yet visibly fallen on them. When Peter and John laid hands on them, something visible happened. Simon the magician saw it and made an offer. He wanted to buy the power to give the Spirit through laying on of hands. Peter's response was fierce. May your silver be destroyed with you. Simon's heart was wrong before G...
