The vision mentioned here came to Isaiah after years of preaching and was designed to deepen his spirituality. In this sermon, I am going to discuss this vision in detail and let it deepen our own spirituality thus rendering us more effective in our service to the Lord.
From Peter preaching a sermon that saw the salvation of 3,000 souls in chapter 2 to the apostle Paul landing ashore on the island of Malta after miraculously surviving a deadly shipwreck in chapter 28, the book of Acts is full of powerful supernatural incidents. Tonight I want us to look at one such incident and that is St. Paul raising Eutychus from the dead. The key verse and the keyword of this paragraph which is also the basis for my message tonight are found in the twelfth verse. The NLT renders it as:
Meanwhile, the young man was taken home alive and well, and everyone was greatly relieved.
New Living Translation
Speaking of physical relief I want to use Paracetamol as an illustration. It’s common practice to use Paracetamol in case of a headache because it brings instant relief. How cum these tiny pills capable of bringing relief to such a complicated unit like the human body? What you see is only a tiny single pill. Yet each pill is the combination of three powerful ingredients capable of relieving pain, put together using a scientific formula.
However, scientific formulas cannot always help us with our physical and emotional calamities. This is why in Acts 20:7-12, God has given us a spiritual formula of three biblical ingredients that were in the life of Eutychus. They are having a hunger for God’s Word, seek fellowship with God’s people, and remain in God’s presence. They brought relief to Troans at a moment of a great disaster. Tonight, let’s consider these ingredients in detail.
The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that God’s word is useful for rebuking. It is important that preachers though not on a regular basis confront sin from the pulpit whenever the need arises. It’s a common factor however that preachers hardly confront sin today. Probably because of fear people will feel offended and leave the church. There are however some principles that I follow in confrontational preaching and most of the time the results have proved to be rewarding. [Image Credit: Tutu Kazooie]
The Christian life is not a cakewalk. Definitely not when you are in charge of something. Spiritual, emotional, and even physical storms and shipwrecks are inevitable in Christian leadership. Consider the life, ministry, and death of the great leader Paul. He was sought after to kill, shipwrecked, and finally got executed! In today’s sermon, I am going to share some of the leadership qualities that Paul expressed when he got shipwrecked. So as leaders we shall know how to handle our own storms and shipwrecks in ministry.
In recent years Halloween has grown in popularity. It has now become the second-largest money-producing holiday, second only to Christmas. Don’t conclude that the reason for this is commercialism. It is far deeper than that. It is the result of man’s search for the supernatural.
Christianity has been discarded as irrelevant and unbelievable, yet man is still searching for something beyond himself. The occult seeks to fill that vacuum. This is not intended to be a tirade against children having fun. You must decide what your children do or do not do. However, before you decide you need to know all the facts.
Grace is the central theme of this parable. In it, we meet a group of workers whose master wasn’t very happy (in Matthew 20:13 “friend” is used ironically) because they failed to identify the grace he expressed unto them. Likewise today there are Christians in the church who don’t walk in the grace of God. Needless to say, such behavior doesn’t impress God at all. In this parable, I recognized three reasons why we fail to walk in God’s grace and how to overcome them.
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