Because God loves perfectly (taught throughout the Word of God) He also hates perfectly. He loves all that righteous, holy, and in line with His will and glorious purpose. Which means simultaneously hates whatever threatens or opposes those things. As a result, God expects and demands of His children to love what He loves and hate what He hates.
This is an intensely personal message today. Many of you know about my dad's illness and his passing a few years ago. Today, I will share with you my struggles & joys over the past 3 years. The Lord didn’t heal him – he suffered terribly – my mom did too. Dad didn’t get to ever see Petal FBC. He didn’t get to see our new house, see my boys grow up, he didn’t get to meet Emma – and walk with us through that challenging journey. I don’t get to call him and ask him for much needed advice and counsel. My mom is all alone. God spoke so clearly into my life yesterday that I felt compelled to share with you. I shared it with Rebecca and she encouraged me to share it as well. In my quiet time, reading a story I had read many times, [but also alongside it reading a book by Louie Giglio entitled "I am not but I know I AM"], God offered something I had never thought about before. Let's look at the story.
Because God loves perfectly (taught throughout the Word of God) He also hates perfectly. He loves all that righteous, holy, and in line with His will and glorious purpose. Which means simultaneously hates whatever threatens or opposes those things. As a result, God expects and demands of His children to love what He loves and hate what He hates.
Leaving Earth – we have been building on that idea of space, and rockets, and NASA, and people doing something new that had never been done before and the risk and revolution that it was. These people were jumping on a rocket if you will called the Holy Spirit and going to a new place that had never been gone to before even to places eventually that were like new planets, they had never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When God wants to use us, He often gets us uncomfortable about where we are, and prepares to go to places that are new and different So today, we want to talk about the disciples as they leave earth, they begin to turn the focus even more outward and begin to help others.
This morning we want to take a look at the Impact of the Church as we complete The ACTS: Revolution. As we look back we see a revolution like never before nor has ever been repeated since of the revolution that took place in the lives of those early believers and how the Lord used them to revolutionize the world in such way that left an impact that we are still feeling and walking in today. This is not some story that we are looking at in Scripture that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that has no effect on us today. Oh no! It was and still is a revolution and is becoming more of one in our day more than ever in the history of this country.
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting (basket) of silver. Proverbs 25:11
All Christians have received a portion of God’s resources with which we need to be good stewards. God holds us accountable for the resources he entrusts to us. Those resources are our time, talents, spiritual gifts, energies personalities, experiences, attitudes, and material resources. The awesome thing is that God does not judge us on how much ability we have, because He has given us that ability. As a result we are rewarded based on our faithfulness not the results. We have to remember that God doesn’t give us these to make much of ourselves but to make much of him and to advance His kingdom.
This morning we take a look at Hebrews chapter 11. We are talking about having NOW Faith, that will help us trust Him. God is asking us all today, "Will you trust me?" So many things are going on around us that are causing great concern right now, but God is saying "Will you trust me?"
I want us to take a look at the early Church and we see these very things occurring – it was normal, natural, regular, fresh with the Spirit of God blowing through their lives and their church and I pray this morning that it will awaken and ignite a fresh movement and wind of God in our lives and in our Church that will leave a deep and lasting impact which we will take a look at in our next message.
We are living in perilous days no doubt. Should we be surprised? No! The Lord told us these things would happen – it shouldn’t really shock us. The Church is on a decline in America according to latest Pew Research – we are fast heading towards what Europe is now. SBC latest report showed we lost another couple of hundred thousand members – back down to 15.5 million or so – down from well over 16 million a decade ago. However as one commentator said, the Church is not dying, but in reality it is becoming clearer who the true believers are. The line is being drawn in the sand and it is why today’s message and the ensuing ones will fit into exactly that Christianity isn’t normal anymore and that’s good news. IN the Book of Acts is wasn’t normal then either!
