We've been studying together in the book of
Acts, written by the only Gentile writer in
the New Testament, Luke, Dr. Luke.
And Luke is telling us of the beginning
of the Christian church in Acts 2, when
the Spirit comes, and now Jesus is gone,
Holy Spirit has come, and now the apostles
and the Christians propagate the gospel, and the
church starts to grow, and there's many valuable
lessons.
We're already now in chapter 18, which is
Paul and Silas, along with Timothy, Dr. Luke
himself, and some others, they are on what
is called in Bible parlance Paul's second missionary
trip.
And they are in Greece.
They were called there by a dream that
Paul got from the Lord, a man from
Macedonia, that's northern Greece, said, come over and
help us.
So Paul's there, and they've gone from Philippi
to Thessalonica, and they went to Berea, and
now, from Berea they went to Athens, and
now they're in the major city in all
of Greece at that time, which is Corinth.
They're just arriving there, as we read, let's
see just 11 verses and see what we
can gather.
What we're doing here is we're doing, reading
it and then saying, what are the lessons
for us today?
This is what happened to them 2,000
years ago, but now what does it mean
to us today?
So let's read.
After this, Paul left Athens and went to
Corinth.
There he met a Jew named Aquila, a
native of Pontus, that's in northern Turkey, what
we would call Turkey, who had recently come
from Italy with his wife Priscilla.
Because Claudius, who's that?
That's the Roman emperor who succeeded Caligula and
who came before Emperor Nero.
Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave
Rome.
Paul went to see them.
And because he was a tent maker, as
they were, he stayed and worked with them.
Every Sabbath, he reasoned in the synagogue, trying
to persuade Jews and Greeks.
Every Sabbath, what day of the week would
that be?
Saturday, he went to the synagogue.
If there were 10 Jewish men in a
community and enough Jews there to support a
synagogue, they would have one, a place of
teaching and praising and worshiping.
No animal sacrifices, though, because that could only
be done at the temple.
That could only be done at the temple,
and the temple was in Jerusalem.
So now, every Saturday, every Sabbath, he reasoned
in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and
Greeks.
What Greeks would those be?
Those would be the Greeks who wanted the
purity of monotheism of the Jewish religion, and
they would be called God-fearing Gentiles, and
they would worship along with the Jews.
When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, he
had left them there.
Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to
the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.
Why was that?
Because Silas and Timothy, we learned, from another
part of the New Testament, brought offerings with
them.
And now, when they gave those offerings, Paul
didn't have to work anymore, so he devoted
himself exclusively now to teaching and preaching that
Jesus was the Christ.
But when the Jews opposed Paul in the
synagogue and became abusive, he shook out his
clothes in protest and said to them, your
blood is beyond your own heads.
I'm clear of my responsibility.
From now on, I will go to the
Gentiles.
Then Paul left the synagogue and went next
door to the house of tedious justice, a
worshiper of God.
Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household
believed in the Lord, and many of the
Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.
So God's blessing.
One night, the Lord spoke to Paul in
a vision.
Do not be afraid, keep on speaking, do
not be silent, for I am with you,
and no one is going to attack and
harm you, because I have many people in
this city.
So Saul stayed for a year and a
half, 18 months, teaching them the word of
God.
Now, that city, Corinth, was a major commerce
center 2,000 years ago.
In fact, you couldn't go east-west across
Greece.
Roman traffic that was coming from Italy had
to go through Corinth.
You couldn't go north-south to north to
northern Greece, which was called Macedonia at that
time, without going through Corinth.
So it was a huge cosmopolitan trade center,
much bigger than Athens.
Huge city.
It had all kinds of gods that were
worshiped as part of the Roman Empire.
And the Bible tells us, and history tells
us, that the Corinthians were known as the
least moral people around.
In fact, their debauchery and immorality became a
byword so that someone would say, oh, he's
like a Corinthian, or he's been Corinthianized.
That means he's become like a lowlife, living
in immorality.
It was a cesspool of iniquity.
That's why in 1 Corinthians, you read Paul
saying, and just remember now, swindlers won't go
into the kingdom of heaven.
And then he lists, and the immoral, and
the adulterers, and the male prostitutes, and all
these things.
And he says, and such were some of
you.
But you've been washed.
You've been changed.
The evangelism that went on in Corinth was
dynamic because people were getting their lives transformed
as they heard the good news about Jesus.
What is the good news about Jesus?
Remember, it's not join the church.
It's not black culture.
It's not white culture.
It's not southern culture.
It's not Kentucky culture.
It's not five-point Calvinism.
It's not charismatic gifts of the Spirit.
It's not here comes the man of God,
give your money to him, and all of
that stuff.
That is never found anywhere in the book
of Acts.
We know what the true gospel is if
we just read the book of Acts.
God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son that whoever believes in
him would not perish from the punishment of
their own sins, but they would have the
gift of everlasting life.
That was the simple good news.
That's what churches are supposed to be preaching.
That's what singers are supposed to be singing
about, Jesus.
That's what this church is supposed to feature,
Jesus.
He's the answer.
God in the Old Testament spoke in different
ways through different prophets, but now Hebrews 1
.1, in these last days, he has spoken
to us in his Son.
Jesus is the heart of our faith, and
that was the message that Paul preached, and
I want to remind all of you, coming
in this church has absolutely no value in
itself.
You will not go to heaven because you
came here, nor will you go to heaven
and have your sins forgiven before that because
your parents were Christians.
You have to have a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ.
All in favor, say aye.
And it's so easy.
If you're here today, you have no peace,
no joy, scared to death of dying, emptiness,
you were made for God.
All you have to do is confess your
sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ.
Someone says, well, you shouldn't preach that.
A lot of churches are not talking about
that because it's too confrontational.
People might not want to hear that, and
they might walk out.
Well, let them walk out.
We're gonna learn here about how the early
apostles handled that.
It's not with the seeker-sensitive, user-friendly,
overdone business that we've gotten involved in.
So what can we learn from this story?
Paul comes to this polluted metropolis, and he's
there with his team.
He goes every Saturday to the synagogue.
Why?
To try to prove to them that Yeshua,
Jesus, is the Christ.
He could reason with them because they had
the Old Testament, so he was showing them,
as we've learned.
Isaiah 53, don't be put off by the
fact I told you he died on a
cross.
Look, he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
His face was so marred that nobody would
want to look at him.
That's the beating that the Messiah was gonna
take.
He tried to prove that from their own
scriptures, and Bethlehem is mentioned.
That's where he would be born, and Jesus
was born in Bethlehem, although hundreds of years
before, Micah gave that prophecy.
So he was doing that, and he did
it every Saturday.
What'd he do during the week?
He worked.
There was no church there, no support, no
offerings from anyplace else.
He worked.
The word in the Greek there is he
really gave himself to the work.
What work?
Worked so that he could eat, for Paul's
the one who said if a man doesn't
work, he shouldn't eat.
Don't mooch off of other people your whole
life.
What did he work at?
Well, Aquila and Priscilla were Jews who must
have found Jesus, it seems, sometime, somewhere, and
they were in Rome, and Emperor Claudius went
on one of his anti-Semitic rants and
drove all the Jews out, but history tells
us, Suetonius, the Roman historian, tells us that
right around 49 to 51 AD, that's about
20 years after Christ resurrected and left planet
Earth, that there was some bad time in
Rome, and there was a disturbance concerning the
name Crestus, C-H-R-E-S-T
-U-S, which is a common misspelling of
Christ.
So it could have been that a persecution
broke out against Jewish believers in Jesus in
Rome, and Claudius kicked them all out, and
now Aquila and Priscilla, who were born not
in Rome, ended up in Rome, they now
make it and are found visiting Corinth when
Paul is there.
They seem to be believers.
There's no mention of them being converted upon
meeting Paul, and Paul goes and stays with
them, and they had the same trade as
Paul had.
In the Jewish culture of Paul's day, every
rabbi, every teacher, every good Jew was taught
a manual trade.
You had to learn how to earn a
living beside your study of the scriptures, because
work was honored as it still is in
the Jewish culture.
To work at something is a noble thing,
noble thing, to work.
His trade seemed to be tent making, although
the word can be used also for leather
workers, but he came, Saul, from Tarsus, which
is in part of the world back then,
which was famous for having goats of a
certain kind, whose, when they were sheared, their
hair made very wonderful fabric for tents.
So it seemed like that was Paul's trade,
and now he hooks up with Aquila and
Priscilla, and they're making tents during the day
so he can earn a living.
Then when Timothy and Silas come with offerings
that have come from Philippi and other places,
Paul says, no, now I'm gonna devote myself
full time because I got some way to
support myself through offerings, because the Bible does
lay down a principle that he who preaches
the gospel should live from the gospel.
So he can devote himself to that when
possible.
When I first went to the Brooklyn Tabernacle,
the church was able to give Carol and
I $3,800 total salary the first year.
You think we could support our family?
No.
So she got a job, I got a
job, because you do what you have to
do.
So what do we learn?
Let's just take this.
Notice this great lesson for all of us.
When you're a Christian, you have to learn
to adjust to the circumstances and learn how
to roll different ways.
When he had no money, he said, I'll
make some tents.
He didn't go, hey, I'm Paul.
I saw the Lord on the road to
Damascus.
I'm gonna write a third of the New
Testament or more.
Isn't somebody gonna support me?
Don't I get a witness here?
God just told me there's 12 people supposed
to give $2,000 each and all that
other stuff.
No.
Went to work.
Because of what you do, what you have
to do.
He didn't complain about it.
He just worked.
And on the Sabbath, he worked hard.
And on the Sabbath, he went to the
synagogue and he preached the good news and
tried to reason with them.
So this is an important truth because I've
met Christians all my life who can't adjust
when things don't go well.
It's their way or the highway.
And the minute somebody gets up in their
grill a little bit or is obnoxious, listen,
if you're gonna get upset every time you
meet an obnoxious person, you're gonna be upset
a lot if you live in New York
City.
Am I correct or wrong here?
The minute things don't work out financially, the
minute things don't go as planned, they get
totally ruffled and now they're panic-stricken.
Oh, that thing fell through.
Oh, the bottom fell out.
Oh, I owe this money.
And they're totally discombobulated instead of just saying,
it is what it is.
God is there in the good times.
God is there in the bad times.
You do what you have to do.
You adjust.
We're studying with my class this past week
at the ministry preparation course.
Paul said, I've learned the secret in Philippians,
he says, I've learned the secret of being
content in all different circumstances.
I don't panic over anything.
I know what it is to abound.
I know what it is to have little.
So what?
I got Jesus in both the situations.
Can we put our hands together and say
amen?
I got Jesus.
He's with me.
So I gotta work.
It's not the end of the world.
I won't die from work.
And he worked.
He wasn't too big to work.
Hey, here's the apostle.
You know, in some countries over in different
parts of the world, I don't wanna go
into that, but the bishop or the pastor
or the apostle, when they come in, they
sit on a throne.
They don't sit on regular chairs like everybody
else.
They sit on a throne.
And in some churches, I know this from
close friends who go there, when they walk
in, you all have to stand.
In fact, I wondered why you didn't stand
when I walked in today.
I'm just saying.
That's a long way from Paul making tense,
isn't it?
Nobody's that important not to be able to
work.
One day, Pastor Ware and I were in
the little building that we started in Atlantic
Avenue, and the toilets got all plugged up.
We had no workers.
We had no staff.
So Pastor Ware, who formed the prayer band
and who was such a precious influence in
my life, we went down with some plungers
and some gloves on to clean out the
toilets.
So, whatever.
None of us are too big to do
anything.
If Paul could make tense, you and I
could do anything.
Right?
You gotta learn how to adjust.
You gotta go with the flow here in
life.
Don't be stiff and regimented so when it's
not working out the way you want, you
get all uptight.
Learn to just roll because you do what
you have to do.
The important thing is that Christ is glorified,
not that you and I have life going
the way we want it.
Every day of my life, every week of
my life since I've been in the ministry,
I've seen things that I don't like.
People not doing things they said they would
do.
But then I see a lot of faults
in myself, so how can I get excited
about anybody, right?
How many have seen a few faults in
yourself?
Okay, so what are you getting upset about
everybody for?
It is what it is.
Just roll.
Just find out what God wants you to
do at that moment, and then when it
changes, just change.
Notice there's seasons in life.
There's some seasons you make tense.
Then there's another season when you stop making
tense, and you preach all the time.
Sometimes you're only ministering in the synagogue on
Saturday.
Other times you go, no, I like it
here.
I like to know my schedule.
You can't know a schedule when you're following
the Holy Spirit.
Just go with it.
He stayed in the synagogue until they got
abusive.
The minute they got personal and started to
insult him, he said, I'm out of here.
This is a good lesson.
Nothing is gained when you're witnessing to people
and they get ugly.
You leave them be.
Paul did that.
You never find Jesus arguing with anyone.
He would reason.
He would talk.
The minute they picked up stones to stone
him, minute they got abusive, he would just
turn and leave.
Nobody ever gets saved when you go, I
told you, Jesus is the Son of God.
I'll kill you if you don't bow down
here and worship him.
Usually no one gets converted that way for
some reason.
But notice what he said, because none of
us practice this today.
No one I know of, I want to
more.
But it sounds raw to us.
It sounds overly bold.
But Paul said, when they got abusive and
started to get argumentative and personal, he said,
okay, I'm out of here.
Your blood is on your own hands.
What does that mean?
It's borrowing from a figure of speech in
Ezekiel that if you don't tell people what
they need to hear, then some of the
guilt will be on you, Ezekiel said, God
speaking through him.
But once you tell everybody what they need
to hear, even if they don't listen, God
told Ezekiel, it won't be on you, it's
totally on them.
So Paul says, okay, you don't want to
have eternal life?
You don't want to believe Jesus is the
Messiah?
It's a free world.
Do what you want.
But you're not gonna get abusive with me.
I'll turn to people who aren't abusive.
I'll turn to the Gentiles.
But your blood is on your own head.
Whatever judgment comes on you, it won't because
I held anything back.
Judgment's on you.
You heard the truth, you rejected it.
So I'm good.
I'm not good, it breaks my heart, but
at least I'm clean, I'm clear.
We don't do that much.
We want to argue, argue, instead of just
going to the next person and share Jesus
with.
Sometimes, some of us have argued with the
same person 10 times, told them over and
over and over, and there's five other people
near us and we haven't said one word
to those people.
I mean, let it go.
Maybe just plant a seed and then let
the people go.
But once they get abusive and they seem
hard and close and argumentative, usually, almost always,
nothing good will come of that.
Just plant a seed, let God water it.
Maybe another moment will come when something good
will happen and that seed will bear fruit.
But you turn to the next one.
But I wonder here if all of us
have shared with our loved ones what they
need to know so that we can say,
I'm not gonna be guilty if you are
judged.
Have you told everyone you need to tell
how to get saved, who Jesus is?
Because wouldn't it be terrible?
You love them and you never told them
that.
And now, they don't know what they need
to know.
See, Paul said, I told you what you
need to know.
You don't want to go that way?
Okay, what can I do?
I only work for the Lord.
I'm not the Lord.
But I just wonder, all of us here,
we should think about and pray about that
this week.
Have I told everybody what they need to
know?
The pastor, if I do that, they could
really get upset.
They don't want to hear it.
Share it anyway.
And then look for where the door is,
so if you have to make a quick
exit.
But share it anyway.
And be kind to them.
And be kind to people.
But you gotta tell them.
Someone says, well, you just gotta testify to
them by the way you love them.
That's not found in the Bible.
I'm gonna let my testimony be my witness.
Let your testimony be your witness, but you
don't tell them the plan of salvation.
You don't tell them about Jesus.
They're not gonna be able to believe.
How can anybody believe if they haven't heard?
How can they hear unless someone speaks it?
That's what Paul reasons in Romans.
So, I just want to say to all
of us here, that my mother's concerned about
all her children, her grandchildren, and her great
-grandchildren.
She's concerned about that, that they all know
the plan of salvation.
They know who Jesus is.
You gotta share that.
You want them to wake up in eternity,
and they never knew what they had to
do, and you were five feet away for
five years?
That wouldn't be good, would it?
How many want more boldness, and wisdom, and
love to share Jesus with people everywhere we
go?
Come on, everywhere we go.
Can we say amen out loud?
All right, so now, one last lesson from
this little passage.
This is so beautiful to me.
Paul is in Corinth.
This encourages me.
See, Paul is human.
All these guys that God used, all these
women God used, they're just like us.
When I grew up, I thought people that
God used were like Superman, Superwoman.
They never had problems, never got upset, never
had a bad day.
It's all false.
God never uses anyone because of who they
are.
God uses people despite who they are.
It's all of grace.
It's all his love.
Something must have been churning inside of Paul,
because as we've learned, he took some beatdowns
on his missionary journeys, especially this one.
He escaped where they wanted to stone him.
He got a beatdown in Philippi, ended up
in prison in a filthy dungeon.
And this must have all worked on him.
Because of the abusive threats that were made
in the synagogue in Corinth.
Because the Lord appears to him at night,
and the Lord speaks to him in a
dream, and says this.
Don't be afraid.
Don't be silent.
Keep speaking.
For I am with you, and nobody will
harm you and put their hands on you
in this city.
Let's analyze that.
Listen again.
The Lord appears to him and says, don't
be afraid, don't be silent, keep speaking.
For I am with you, and nobody will
touch you in this city.
And because of that encounter with the Lord,
he stayed there 18 months.
And that's the longest he stayed in any
place up till now.
In his next missionary journey, he's gonna stay
tres años, three years, in Ephesus.
But this, 18 months, this is a long
stay for him.
That's odd, because those are already in the
Bible, those things.
Didn't the Lord say in so many places?
Fear not, don't be afraid.
All the way back to Joshua.
Joshua, when you go to conquer the land
and succeed Moses, don't be afraid.
Jesus kept saying over and over, fear not.
So why would Jesus have to say that
to him?
Because sometimes you get weak.
And even though it's in the book, you
need the Holy Spirit, or Jesus, to come
and repeat it to you, so that you
can keep trucking, keep going.
Oh, I'm so happy the Lord is merciful
with us.
He's full of compassion.
Because he says three things there that Paul
should have known, and he knew it.
But when we get weak and our nerves,
see, Paul's, we know Paul is very emotional,
very intense, seems to be high-strung kind
of guy.
Very intense.
So all this turmoil that's been going on
in his life, and then the threats, and
he's still got scars on his back from
Philippi.
So he needed the Lord to draw near
to him and say, hey, listen, I'm with
you.
I got your back.
He needed to hear the Lord say to
him, don't be afraid.
Why would the Lord say that?
Unless he was being tempted to be afraid.
But haven't you ever tempted to be afraid?
Come on, do I get an amen?
Haven't you ever tempted?
Not like him to get a whooping or
get killed, but we all in our different
ways in our lives, we get afraid.
Afraid of the future, afraid for our family,
afraid financially, afraid this, afraid that.
Sometimes afraid physically.
So the Lord draws near and repeats, and
I felt last night praying alone here in
my office that I'm supposed to say this.
I wanna repeat to you, just like the
Lord used the vision, I hope he's using
me now, I wanna tell whoever's out there,
you in this building, don't be afraid.
The Lord is with you.
I know he said, Lord, I am with
you to the end of the age.
I know that's written, that's a promise, but
sometimes you need it up close and personal,
a reminder.
I am with you.
The Lord is with you.
Don't be afraid.
And don't stop talking about Jesus.
Don't let anybody muzzle you.
The Lord said those three things, but now
he's repeating it through a vision.
Don't be afraid, don't stop talking about me,
and thirdly, remember this, Paul, I am with
you.
Now the fourth one, that's something else.
See, the Holy Spirit speaks to us today
and he makes the Bible alive.
He wrote it, he's the only one who
can teach you this.
No teacher, no theologian can teach you the
Bible.
They can help you understand it, but the
ultimate teacher is the Holy Spirit because he
wrote it.
Do I get an amen here?
He wrote that.
So when you read this, you gotta pray
and say, Lord, Holy Spirit, come and teach
me.
You wrote this.
Could you teach my heart what it really
means?
Not just mi cabeza.
I don't wanna know just in my head
concepts.
I want this in my heart.
Come and teach me.
So the Holy Spirit's ministry is to speak
this word, make it alive to us.
How many have ever had a verse brought
to your mind in the middle of the
day and you knew it was God reminding
you of a promise?
Lift your hand.
How many have ever read a passage of
Scripture that you read 10 times before and
suddenly when you read it, lights go on,
sirens go off?
Come on, how many have ever had that
happen?
Who is that helping you?
That's the Holy Spirit.
But now this last word is not found
in the Bible and in fact, it's not
true for Paul any other time in his
life except then.
This is called a directive word from the
Holy Spirit.
You see, when he got converted, he was
told by the Lord through Ananias who prayed
for him, Jesus said, I'm gonna show him
what great things he must suffer for my
name's sake.
That was Paul's itinerary in life.
He would end up being mightily used but
he would suffer for the cause of Christ.
That's in the Bible.
You can't positive confession that away or do
faith talk and all of that.
It is what it is.
Ah, so when he endured Philippi and other
times we're gonna read here when he's thrown
into prison later, he knew this is part
of my specific life, my calling.
Not everyone's like that.
Billy Graham never has been treated like the
Apostle Paul was.
He has his other battles.
But this last thing he says has nothing
to do with any of us, it's not
a word for us.
Stay in this city for nobody will touch
you.
That can't even be said for Paul in
another city.
What the Lord does is he gives a
personal word of application and direction and says,
Paul, relax and stay here because I'm telling
you, here, nobody will touch you.
Where you go next, that's another whole thing.
Where you've been before, you gotta beat down.
But right now, you stay here and I'm
guaranteeing nobody will touch you, no one will
touch you.
That's called a personal word for the Holy
Spirit.
And it's not for anyone else, it's for
you because he knows what you're going through.
And he says, move, this season is up.
Or he says, stay, don't be afraid, I'm
with you, I got you.
In the body of Christ, especially in evangelical
circles, unfortunately, there's a great bias now against
the supernatural.
The teaching basically is this.
The Holy Spirit inspired the Bible.
He convicts of sin, end of story, no
more Holy Spirit because we have the canon
of the New Testament now and we don't
need the Holy Spirit and that is fallacious.
Every single angle of that is fallacious.
We need the Holy Spirit.
And when he speaks to, notice, when he
speaks to us and directs us and that's
still small voice or however he does it,
it's not new doctrine.
He's not adding to scripture.
He's not giving new manifestations that we all
have to get involved in.
That's where the charismatic movement has done such
damage because they've added so much junk that
a lot of people who want more of
the Holy Spirit go, wait a minute, if
the Holy Spirit is that, the guy's wanking
at the camera, blowing on somebody and they're
falling down and he's taking their money.
If that's the Holy Spirit, I pass, I
don't want that stuff.
And I'm with them, I don't want that
stuff either.
That doesn't sound like Jesus to me.
But I do need the Holy Spirit to
lead me.
Do you need the Holy Spirit to lead
you?
How many want the Holy Spirit to whisper
and give you directives about important moments in
your life or whatever he wants to, lift
your hand high so God will see it.
He will guide the meek in the way
that they should go.
But how would a missionary know what country
to go to if the Spirit can't speak
today?
That's not doctrine.
That's Hudson Taylor, go to China, and he
did, and he changed history.
Without the Holy Spirit, how will we know
what to do?
How will we know where to stay, how
long to do it?
What song to sing, what sermon to preach?
How can we do that without the Holy
Spirit?
Is a computer gonna build the church of
Christ or is the Holy Spirit gonna do
it?
Holy Spirit's gonna do it.
Close your eyes.
Those of you who are longing for a
word of direction from the Holy Spirit for
your life, I'm not saying he'll give it
today.
At this moment, he might.
Pastor, you read my mail.
I need the Holy Spirit to show me
what to do, how to react, what decision,
left or right.
I need a word from God.
I do love him.
I'm a Christian.
I've repented of my sins.
I know he's washed my sins away.
I have his Spirit living inside of me,
but I believe that I don't have to
stress myself out trying to figure out what
to do in life.
In my ministry that God's given me, working
with youth, working in music, working with seniors,
in the city that you come from, God,
I need to hear from you.
I need a word from you, Lord.
Not a word to add to the Bible,
but a word for my life, like you
gave the apostle Paul.
You don't love him more than me.
You gave him that specific, personal word, and
I want that word, Lord.
I want that direction because I wanna keep
in the center of your will.
If you feel that right now, just stand
wherever you are.
Just stand and say, pastor, I want you
to pray before we dismiss that God will
speak that word in a vision, in a
dream, in a whisper, through a Bible verse,
through whatever.
Just stand where you are.
Come on, let's pray.
If somebody's standing near you, very gently, put
your hand on their elbow or their shoulder,
very gently, and pray because I've been there,
like, God, what do I do?
God, I'm at a crossroads, what do I
do?
Show me, speak to me, show me what
to do.
Father God, I pray in the name of
Jesus that the same faithfulness that you displayed
toward your servant, Paul, in directing him, comforting
him, encouraging him, telling him when to settle
down for a little while, showing him the
seasons of life, and then other times you
told him to move, you told him not
to go over there, to go over here.
God, we ask you to direct your people,
Lord.
Direct your people in the way we should
go.
Lord, I lift my voice on behalf of
your sons and daughters.
Lead us.
Didn't you say in your word we would
hear a voice behind us saying, this is
the way, walk in it.
This is the way, walk in it.
Show us that way, Lord.
Not morally, we know that from your word.
We have in your word what's right or
wrong, but God, we have other decisions to
make which are momentous.
Show us.
Lord, I thank you for your word today.
If there's anyone here while our eyes are
closed, anyone here who wants to receive Christ
as their savior, and you'd like someone to
help you and pray, you come right here
to the front when I dismiss now.
And I have people who will give you
a New Testament, will pray with you, will
help you.
Don't put it off.
Christ died for your sins.
Just turn away from your old life and
say, Jesus, I need you.
Come into my life.
You are the son of God.
You are the savior of the world.
Now, Lord, would you bless us and grant
us peace?
Would you help us to be able to
adjust and flow when things change in life
so we don't get uptight and irritable?
When we have to work, we'll work.
When we can do something else, we'll do
something else.
But, Lord, give us su paz.
Give us your peace.
We pray, God, that we will be bold
in sharing the good news, and once people
get rebellious or nasty, we'll have the wisdom
and grace to just turn away gently and
say, I've told you what you need to
know.
I gotta move on now to someone else.
And lastly, keep us open to the voice
of your spirit, for we pray this in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
And everyone said?
Amen.
Hug somebody.
Give somebody a hug right now.
Go ahead.