The church at peace and the church showing Jesus not as one healer among many but as the only healer worthy of the name — that's what we see in this portion of Acts 9. And when we see that, we recognize that Jesus is the one who makes the church flourish, and that He is the one who makes the good news spread. Christ heals; Christ saves. Turn to Him, and take that message to your neighbors. The message that Jesus gives us essentially the same thing that politicians promise has lost the church an awful lot of members in the last two generations. But the real message of the New Testament — that Jesus offers what nobody else does — is the secret behind church growth in the first century, and today. Look to Him and be saved — and then tell everyone you know.
