Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 15:36-16:10, emphasizing how God redirects our steps for His purpose. He highlights Paul's conflict with Barnabas over John Mark, illustrating that disagreements can lead to greater opportunities for the gospel. The sermon encourages believers to embrace redirection, invest in discipleship, and remain sensitive to the Holy Spirit's guidance, as seen in Paul's journey to Macedonia, which ultimately advanced the gospel in Europe. Practical applications include finding a "Timothy" to mentor and trusting God during life's unexpected changes.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Amen. Thank you men for singing.
If you have a child who wants to be dismissed at Children's Church, Ms. Carey is going to be taking them back at this time. If you have your Bibles, we're going to go to Acts chapter 15. We're going to finish out chapter 15 and read the first 10 verses of Acts chapter 16.
And last week we talked about handling conflict with grace and what that looks like. And hopefully that was a blessing. Hopefully it helped you in your walk.
I know that not all of us get to walk in peaceful times and we have conflict. And so this is times where we can begin to learn from Scripture of how to live our life, how to have an exact life to live by the examples that we have in Scripture.
Pray for me. I've got some head stuff going on with pollen changing, with everybody hay and fields and weather changing. I'm a little congested.
The doctor just said take Sudafed. So I've been taking up a little jittery this morning. I told my wife we're sitting there at Sunday school and I was just shaking a little bit. I said I'm not used to being on high-powered stuff like that. And it was getting me all excited.
So I may be a little rambunctious and maybe 10 minutes and I'm done. I don't know.
Some of you are probably praying for the latter. I don't know. But Acts 15 verse 36 through 16 verse 10. Let's all stand and we'll read the Scripture today in honor of God's Word.
The Bible says that after some time had passed, Paul said to Barnabas, Let us go back and visit the brothers and sisters in every town where we had preached the word of the Lord and see how they're doing.
Barnabas wanted to take along John who was called Mark, but Paul insisted that they should not take along this man who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them on the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company.
Barnabas took Mark with him and set off to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and departed.
And after being commended by the brothers and sisters in the grace of the Lord, he traveled through Syria and Cilia and strengthened the churches. In chapter 16 verse 1, Paul went on to Derbe and Lystra.
And while they were there, a disciple named Timothy, a son of a believing Jewish woman whose father was Greek, the brothers and sisters of Lystra and Iconium spoke highly of him.
Paul wanted Timothy to go with him, so he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were of these places since they all knew that his father was a Greek.
Strengthening the Churches
And as they traveled through the towns, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and the elders in Jerusalem for the people to observe. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.
And so they went through the region of Pamphylia and Galatia, and they had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they came to Messiah, they tried to go to Bithyni, but the spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Passing by Mysteria, they went down to Tauros.
And during the night, Paul had a vision in which Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, come over to Macedonia and help us. After he had seen this vision, we made immediate efforts to seek out and to set out to Macedonia,
concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done for us. Thank you for your blessings this morning. We'll be able to worship you through song.
I never want to take that for granted, just being able to lift our voices and praise you for who you are. Be able to praise holy, holy, holy in how we're going to see you one day, God.
Help us to not get over the fact that you've sent your son to die for us.
And I pray, God, that you'd help us this morning as we open your word, as we preach, that your word will be lifted high. In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated when, titled the message, When God Redirects Our Steps.
We often go through life and situations come up, situations happen, and our paths get changed or directions get changed or things just become a little different than what we're expecting or wanting them to happen.
And when that happens, we can sometimes get angry. We can sometimes get upset.
We can get frustrated that our plans didn't work out the way that we thought they should work out.
And if you're like me, a type A personality that's got to plan everything out and has to get everything right and scheduled, it can be frustrating when these things begin to change.
And so these are some good verses for us to understand that sometimes God redirects our steps for a purpose and a plan.
On a December night in 1914, I was reading an article this week about this, a massive explosion shook West Orange, New Jersey. This was a laboratory of Thomas Edison. He had spent years experimenting,
and you can look these pictures up. The compound that he had of buildings was massive, and one building was just completely destroyed and engulfed in flames, and firefighters rushed in, but the blaze was so intense that quickly consumed most of the buildings.
Priceless experiments, prototypes of research worth millions of dollars were destroyed.
Edison's 24-year-old son, Charles, was running around, and he was searching frantically for his father, and finally he found him standing near the fire as calm as could be. And he doesn't understand what's going on. He said, Dad, everything's going up in smoke. What are we going to do?
And Edison softly looked at his son and said, Go get your mother, son, and all of her friends, because this fire is the greatest fire they're ever going to experience in their life. I read that. I'm like, what in the world?
He's seeing his entire life work going up, and he's like, hey, let's go get everybody. They've got to see what's going on here. The next morning, as the sun rose, the ruins were smoldering.
There was still smoke coming. Edison called all of his employees together and said, Today, we're rebuilding.
Yesterday, we cleared out all the old mistakes. Today, we start fresh.
And within just three weeks of work and labor, the laboratory was up and running again, and soon after, Edison unveiled some of the most wonderful productions of inventions that the world had ever seen. What seemed like a devastation was actually a redirection,
a fresh start that led to greater breakthroughs that even Edison himself didn't even realize. And Paul, in his journey, had an Edison moment in Acts chapter 15 and 16. His plans went up in smoke. He had conflict with Barnabas.
God began to close the doors for him to go to Asia. Detours happened that he didn't anticipate. But instead of quitting,
Paul allowed God to redirect his steps. God allowed Paul to redirect him to Macedonia, and the gospel broke out in Europe for the very first time in human history. Now, if you know anything about America, America is a descendant of Europeans,
God's Plan in Our Struggles
right? We come from Europeans. And so this was the gospel going so that we could hear the gospel, so that we could understand that God is still saving souls. Sometimes God allows our plans to burn down. We don't like it. We get upset. We get frustrated. We get angry at God sometimes.
But not often is it to ruin us, but it's to redirect us. And what looks like a loss can actually be a way of making room for something greater.
A way that God is saying, if you'll just trust me in this moment, I know it seems like chaos. I know it seems like the world is going up in flames.
I know that it seems like this is not your plans. But if you'll just trust in me, I know that you'll see the greater yes in the end. And so let's look at the first couple of verses here.
The first verse, Paul's passion for people. Verse 36, we see that Paul, after some time had passed, the Bible says, let us go again and visit the brethren in every city where we had preached the word of the Lord and see how they're doing.
Now, if you remember correctly, a couple of weeks ago, we preached about Paul's journey. And as he went through some of these towns, and if you remember correctly, he was beaten.
He was thrown out of the city for dead. He had plots to come against him. And this is his idea.
Let's go back to the people that beat us. Let's go back to the danger, and let's make sure they're doing well. This tells me that he had a passion to return. He had a passion that even though he had been beaten, even though he had been stoned, even though he was nearly killed,
his heart burned to go back to see these people. His heart burned to go back to see the persecution that was going to happen. And to say, listen, we recovered, and persecution's going to happen. And oftentimes in Paul's writing, he says,
listen, you're going to be persecuted for your faith, but fear not, God is there with you, and life is going to get hard. But he says, let's go again. Let's go back. Let's go and see what's going on. True gospel passion doesn't fade when things get hard.
When things get hard, our passion for the gospel, our passion for people should invigorate us to say, okay, I know it's tough, I know things are hard, but who can I go out, who can I reach, and who can I tell about the gospel? He also had a passion to encourage here.
But right before I say that, I want to give us an idea of two things.
The missionaries often return to the same field they were at when they go on furlough because when they are on furlough, they get to experience freedom in America, and they get to experience things, but yet they go back
to the suffering and the persecution because they know that their people are there that need to hear the gospel.
My mind goes oftentimes to firefighters who are so selfless in what they do that just yesterday I was mowing, and I looked up, and I saw the fire trucks around the corner, and later it come to find out
that a 17-year-old had crossed the line and hit a 54-year-old truck head-on, and the 17-year-old didn't have a seatbelt on, and he succumbed to the injuries at the scene and died. And these firefighters were out there, and they're trying to revive this man.
They were trying to do their job, and oftentimes you'll see firefighters that'll bring people out of a burning building, and they'll get them to safety, and then as the moment they lay them down, what do they do?
Returning to Difficult Places
They turn around, they go back to the burning building.
They go back to the danger because their job is not finished just because that person is saved, and this should be the passion that we have that our job is just not saved. Once someone comes to know Christ, we've got to go and we've got to tell others.
We've got to go, and we've got to experience the gospel to other people so that they can look at us, and they can say that person loves Jesus. And Paul had a passion to encourage as well. He wanted to see how they were doing.
Now, this is not just about numbers, but this is about the souls, and the growth, and the faith that they have. Discipleship is not complete at conversion.
Now, I was raised in a church, and I love my home church. I love what God did there, but oftentimes there was, let's get people saved, and then hopefully the Lord will work out, and things will be good.
And there was not an emphasis on discipleship. There was not an emphasis on one-on-one passionate coming together and caring for one another's souls and having small groups and having things that are going to grow us in our faith. And I'm here to tell us, church, that it continues to go on and on and on.
We must be a church that is growing, but we must be a church that is building relationships with one another, that is discipling one another, that is challenging one another to grow closer in our walk with the Lord,
to grow closer in our walk with each other, to be vulnerable, to say, I'm struggling here. Can you help me? Can you pray with me about this? I need you to encourage me.
I want to grow deeper in my relationship with Christ. I want to be encouraged to come to Sunday school.
I want to come to small groups on Wednesday. I want to do these things so that I can grow in my relationship. And Paul was saying, listen, as believers, we must encourage one another to do these things.
The question that we have to ask ourself is, do you love people enough to risk the inconvenience or even danger just to help them grow in Christ?
Are we willing to be persecuted for our faith in order for someone else to grow? Are we willing to have our life be an example for faithfulness and an example for sometimes pain and torture for others to know about Christ and for others to come to know him?
So Paul had a passion for his people here, but Paul and Barnabas, number two, also had a painful parting. And this is a difficult thing for us because we never want to lose friends.
We never want to lose brothers and sisters in Christ. We never want to have conflict. If you're like me,
conflict is not the number one thing on your day. You don't wake up and say, who can I get into an argument today with? Who is the person at work?
Who is the person in my community? Who's the person at school that I can just go and argue with today? That's not normal, our personality.
And so two godly men had the same goal, and yet they were split over this one man named John Mark. They were split over this decision of do we move forward with him or do we not? And Paul said, I can't continue with him.
And Barnabas said, no, no, there's still some good things, and there's some hope that we'll see here, and I hope you can see this. But the first thing that comes up is the dispute.
The dispute that happens. Barnabas, his name literally means the son of encouragement, wanted to give John Mark a second chance. He said, God can use him.
God can work in his life. And Paul, can we just trust that God can do some things? Maybe he just needs to mature a little bit. Maybe he just needs to grow in his faith. And Paul focused on his ministry, doubled down, and he doubted that Mark's reliability
could stand up to the journey that they were going to go on. After his desertion, after he had abandoned him, he had lost this respect.
And in this dispute, Paul and Barnabas had a dispute as well. And oftentimes in our life, we come to a fork in the road, and we come into this point where we've got to ask ourselves, where am I going to go, and what am I going to do, and how
am I going to even get through this? And this is what Paul and Barnabas came to. They had this dispute, and eventually this division happened. The Bible says they sharply contended with each other.
They fought with each other. I literally read this, and I say they were like yelling at each other because they were so passionate about this decision here. And ultimately, it led to them parting ways. It led to them having to have a disagreement and a division that happened.
And this is saying that sometimes this has to happen for the gospel to be multiplied. God used this work, and now instead of one missionary team going out, God, through this disagreement,
allowed two separate missionary journeys to go out and two parting of ways so that the gospel would be spread even more. Now, we didn't see that at the first time. Right?
We just see a disagreement. We see an argument. We're like, well, man, if these guys, these are the pillars of the faith. They're arguing. They're having problems. Well, it's probably not so bad when we argue about little things around here.
And so now, all of a sudden, we can look at the backside, and we can say this disagreement, this division allowed the gospel to be spread into two different regions at the same time because God was working in the background.
Oftentimes, a river will go, and through the course of nature, that river splits into two rivers. And there's a fork in that river, and this river begins to bless multiple different regions of the area. And this is the ministry that we see. This division allowed these mission teams to cover more ground.
But then we get to see the development that happens because contrary to Paul,
we don't get to see, we get to see the end of the story. Paul doesn't.
We get to have the Paul Harvey moments, and here's the end of the story. Here's the rest of the story. We get to see that, but Paul in this moment didn't. Later, Paul would commend Mark in 2 Timothy 4, verse 11, and he would say this. He would say that,
what once was broken with Mark has allowed me to see that he's beneficial to my ministry. Bring him to me so that he can benefit me.
We also know that the second gospel that is written, Mark, would be the gospel that was written by John Mark himself. It's the earliest gospel account that we have. It's the earliest written account of Jesus' life, and we see that Mark,
John Mark, in this disagreement, God worked in a way that we would have a fourth gospel through this.
We would have people that were writing down so that we can be encouraged as well, so that we can be encouraged through scripture because there was a disagreement, there was a dispute, but yet God worked in the background. Now Barnabas could have said, you know, Paul, you're right.
John Mark, he's useless. He's worthless. I don't have time for him.
I'm not going to worry about him. Let's just continue on our journey, and we, through the providence of God, would not have what we have today in scripture, and through the encouragement of Barnabas, he came, and he came beside this young man, and he began to develop and to work in his life,
which should challenge us to ask ourselves this question. I'm going to give this question multiple times today. Who are we in conflict with that we can begin to work in this relationship to build them up in Christ?
Maybe they hurt us in the past. Maybe they disagreed with us in the past, but now we can say, you know what, let's put aside our differences and let's begin to work for the sake of the gospel.
Let's begin to work to see God's name lifted high, to see the glory of God be lifted to the highest so the world around us can see the good things that God is doing. But now we begin to see the power of discipleship. Verses 1 through 5 of chapter 16,
Paul meets this young man named Timothy. Timothy at this time was a very young man, probably in his early teenage years and Paul, through the faith that he exhibited in looking at him, saw that this guy is ready for ministry. And Paul stepped out and said, hey Timothy, can you walk with me? Can you come beside me?
Can you go around with me? Can you begin to live your life around my life so I can model you to be the next generation of Christians?
And this is so important for us to understand because church, if we are not developing the next generation of Christians, then we will not see a next generation come up and lead in this church or any churches around
our community or in our world for that matter because discipleship is so key and Paul models this in the first couple of verses of chapter 16 that this is so vitally important and it starts in three different areas and the first way it starts is the family influences.
You see, the family is the breeding ground, is the home base for ministry to begin to influence around other people. How you live your life will directly influence how your children love and serve God.
Raising Godly Children
Parents this morning, listen, because this is the most important work that we have been given to raise our children to love the Lord with their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
The Bible says that Timothy had a godly mother named Eunice and he had a godly grandmother named Lois and through their love for the Lord it rippled through this generation to a second generation in Eunice to a third generation into Timothy. We understand Timothy's father was not a godly man.
He was a Greek by definition and nowhere in scripture does it ever say that his father came to know Christ.
But what we know is though he had two other people that were loving him, that were bringing him to the synagogue, that were bringing him underneath his teaching, that were investing in the influence that they had. It starts at the home.
I can get up and I can preach my heart out for 30, 40, 50 minutes.
If you let me I'll preach for an hour, hour and a half. I've got notes for days up here. But in that amount of time it's a drop in the bucket with the amount of time that you have with your kids.
It's a drop in the bucket with the amount of time that you get to influence your children.
And if we are constantly bringing up scripture, if we're praying with our kids, if we're encouraging our kids to love the Lord, we will begin to see a generation that walks into their school and as we looked at in Sunday school this morning in 1 Peter,
that where their students in their school will look at them and say, what is different with you?
Why is your life different? Why are you nice when someone's mean to you? Why are you praying over your meal at lunchtime?
Everyone just gets their food and they just jump in. Why are you living this way? You go to this thing that's a prayer meeting, what are you doing?
And these young people will be able to influence their generation as well, but it begins in the family and it begins at home.
Then it continues, oh, I'm going to read this little illustration that I came across. Suzanne Wesley had two children, John and Charles, and they went off to create a whole movement of churches because of her investment in her children that impacted the world. Would we be a Suzanne Wesley?
Ministry investments, the number two, Paul poured into Timothy. He mentored him. He began to multiply his ministry into him and he took him on these missionary journeys. Now you can imagine, Timothy, he's going with Paul and we're going to see later Paul was thrown into jail.
Now this is his hero. This is his guy that he's investing in and all of a sudden the guy that he's following is like, hey, I'm in jail and I'm praising the Lord. And would it be that we would invest in others that even in our difficulties they see that we serve and trust the Lord.
This mentorship multiplied in their mission. The Bible says that churches were strengthened in their faith as their discipleship took root.
All of a sudden Paul walks up in this church and Barnabas isn't there. You know they're asking questions. Where's Barnabas?
We like Barnabas better than we like Paul. Right? He's the encouraging guy. Paul's the guy that's coming in ripping their face off. Hey, where's Barnabas at? And so he had to talk about this division and he said, hey, well we settled that. We work on things. This is a new guy named Silas.
He's working with me. He's doing some things and hey, we've also got this young kid back here, Timothy. Man, he's showing some great things. And now all of a sudden these churches they're strengthened because there was division and they worked through it. They handled their conflict. He's bringing other people along with them.
These churches are like, hey, we want to do that. We want to bring up young people.
We want to be discipling these young people that are in our church and we want our churches to grow and be strengthened in that same way. What would it look like in our church for discipleship to take root?
For us to say, I just want to influence a young man or a young woman. I want to love on them.
I want to take them to lunch. I want to take them to dinner. I want to bring them over to my house.
I want to invest in them so that one day the Lord can use them to be the next Sunday school teacher, the next deacon, the next leader in our sound room, the next person in our children's church room, the next mother and father that's going to raise their children here.
I want to be involved in their life that same way and then we begin to see the fruitful increase that happens. The Bible says that the churches just didn't add but they increased daily. You see, discipleship fuels multiplication.
People ask us often, how are we going to grow the church? How are we going to grow ourselves? It's through discipleship but how are we going to grow physically in number? It's through discipleship.
It's through having a life that is on mission for God. It's for having a life that's saying, I'm just going to sacrifice.
I'm going to love one another. I'm going to pour in with one another. Whether I've got five years or 50 years left on this earth, I just want to influence the next generation of people behind me. And I want to ask you this morning, who's your Timothy?
Who's the person that you're intentionally pouring your life in for the future of ministry? Who is the person that you're saying, I want to text them on Monday.
I want to say, how was your day at school? I want to give them a call on Wednesday and say, hey, I hope you're going to be at Bible study night. I'm going to be there. I want you to be there.
Hey, we're going to have a Sunday night singing this week. It'll be an encouragement to you. I want you to be there. I want you to be at our game night.
I want you to be here that's going to just challenge them and encourage them to come and be a part of the believers of Christ. Who is our Timothys that we're looking at and we're saying, I want to invest in this person. You see, I can't disciple a hundred people,
but I can disciple one. I can disciple a small group of three or four that I meet with in a counseling session and I can begin to pour my life into them, but you bring a hundred people in here, I'm not going to be able to have intentional discipleship.
I can preach and I can open the word and fumble my way through some of my notes as we go through here, but you get me in a room with a couple of people. You put yourself in a room with a couple of people and you share your story.
Oh, the power of your story is so powerful when we begin to share it with other people and we say, yeah, I was a 17-year-old just like you.
I went through life and I had friends that abandoned me and I had people that turned their back on me, but God was faithful when he brought new people in my life.
God was faithful when he encouraged my family through a divorce and God was faithful when my best friend got sent to jail.
God was faithful when these things happened if we would just be willing to sit in a small group of people and share our story and to share our faith. And if we don't have a Timothy, then we are directly disobeying Scripture because we're not discipling other people in our lives.
And then number four, we see the pressing of the Holy Spirit. We see the pressing of the Spirit because what happened here is Paul wanted to go one way.
God's Direction in Our Lives
Paul said, hey, I've got to continue going this way. He said he was intentionally going down to Toraz where Paul was from. He wanted to evangelize the people with where he was at
and the Spirit began to direct him and say, no, no, no, you're not going to go that way. I need you to go this way. I need you to go into this place called Macedonia. And he's thinking, man, these Macedonians, they don't know Jesus. There's no churches there.
I've already established a work down here. There's already people that I'm pouring into. We read through Galatia. We read through Ephesus.
There's these churches that he's planted. There's these places where he's been going where he'll eventually write letters to. And the Spirit's saying, no, I need you to go somewhere else. I need you to go somewhere that's going to be completely foreign to you.
I need you to go somewhere that is going to radically change the course of the world. And Paul didn't see that. Paul didn't understand that. And Paul was confused.
And God had to do a couple of things. The first thing he had to do was he had to physically close some doors in his life. Verses 6 and 7, he was forbidden by the Spirit to even preach in Asia or Bethany.
This is strange not to be told to evangelize, right? Imagine me going to the school or me going to a game or me going somewhere and the Spirit literally telling me don't go talk to that person about Jesus. This is what was happening.
Paul's like, I'm going here. This is where I'm deciding and the Spirit's like, no, you're not. And he was so grieved. He was so hurt. He's like, God, why? You're doing so much in this region.
You're doing so much with these people. I want to continue this work here. And God, through his providence, said something like this.
This no is me saying that I have a better yes for you. And oftentimes, we have to put our will on the table and say, God, I'm willing to abandon all this in order for you to give me a better yes. I'm willing to abandon my goals, my ideologies,
my desires, so that you can tell me a better way to go. And Paul didn't see this, but Paul doesn't go to Macedonia.
I truly believe that the gospel doesn't come to America. But through Paul's efforts of going into the European area and going into this Macedonia area,
the gospel analysis gets spread in a way that he could not even imagine in the region that he was in. Sometimes we have to put our plans on the table and say, God,
wipe my desires away and allow you to replant these desires and you direct my life. It's hard. Trust me, church, it is hard.
I've done it a couple of times. And it is the most difficult thing when you are living in Idaho and you've began to plant your roots and you begin to do some things and you've been there for years and God says, it's time for you to leave and you say,
but God, I'm doing these things. I've had two kids here.
God says, no, no, no, your time here is done. And I sat down with my pastor and he looked at me and he said, where are you going? I said, well, I'm going back to North Carolina. My family's there. What church are you going to? I don't have a church I'm going to.
Well, where are you going to live at?
In a little 10 by 10 room in my mom's house with two kids with all of her hoarded stuff around.
We didn't have a place for our suitcase to unload our clothes. We lived out a suitcase for three months.
That's the yes we put on the table to say, God, I'm willing to come serve you and I'm willing to be here now for 10 years and God begins to plant roots and I've got young people from all
over the state that text me and say, Pastor James, can you pray for me about this? I've got adults that text me and say, my marriage is struggling. Can you come and pray with me?
I've got a young lady that I'm dealing with right now that's had some horrible, horrible things in her life but God brought me here for this reason for me to see that God has a better yes for us
if we'll just put our desires on the table and say, God, wipe it away if it needs to be wiped away and allow me to do what you want me to do
but we have to be willing to close those doors and see those doors that are closed and then God comes in and gives him a clear direction.
He said, I've closed the doors and now here is your direction that you need to go. In Troas, Paul received this vision of Macedonian man crying out for help.
God was leading not just in about where he could go but who he was specifically going to see.
It begins to bring to mind the man named Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor wanted to take the gospel to the inland of China, a closed off country to the gospel and he wanted to preach to them the good news of God's salvation and it was hard, it was difficult,
these unreached inland people that this was God's Macedonian call for him but he had this direction and I believe when we begin to take these desires and dreams that we have and we say, God, I'm willing to forsake
them all if you'll just tell me where to go, I believe he gives us a very clear direction of where we can go and how we can influence. I can't tell you what that is.
It's only between you and the Lord and prayer and trusting in him but I believe when we begin to get to this point where we say, God, I'm willing to listen to you, he gives us this clear direction where we can trust in him and then verse 10, we see here,
Paul and Silas and Timothy, we see a confident obedience. Look at what it says here, it says they immediately, we endeavored.
There was no delay, there was no debate, there was no pros and cons list, there was no, this is what we've got to do, this was them saying, God told us to go here, we're leaving tomorrow.
It's as little as immediately they left to go to their endeavor. This was the first step in to Europe, a history changing obedience. Church, are we that sensitive?
When the Holy Spirit says, go talk to that person, go across the street and see what's going on, when he burdens us to go and do things, are we so in tune with the Spirit that we immediately drop what we're doing, we immediately stop and we say, God, I've got to follow you,
God, I've got to listen to what you're doing, I'm going to obey you, I'm going to have this concise obedience that is going to be so confident that you're telling me to do this and you go and you
do it and you begin to see God work in ways that you could never imagine. I give this example often, I may have shared it here,
I know I've shared it with some of our young people before, but I was a teenager in high school and I'm running down the courtyard in between lunchtime and there was a little girl, her name was Anna, she's
sitting there on the courtyard bench and she is crying, her eyes are bowed, she's just sobbing and I stopped and I said, I don't know what's going on but Anna, I just feel like I need to pray for
you, I said like a three word prayer and I got up and I ran with all my boys and believe it or not, I did run at one point
and I got in my class and like five, six years ago, she messaged me on Facebook and she said, James,
you remember that day? I'm like, sorta, not really, it was like three seconds
but I was so obedient to the Holy Spirit, she said, I was contemplating committing suicide that day, my boyfriend just broke up with me, life was in the drain, I didn't know what was going to go, she said hundreds and thousands of people, we went to a large high school,
she said so many people ran by and not one person stopped except you,
you were the only person that stopped, you were the only person that prayed, you were the only person that said anything and then that day I realized that I had a greater opportunity in my life than what I was thinking in that moment,
she said, I wanna thank you for stopping that day because no one else did,
I would never have known that unless she'd have messaged me, I would have never, I would not even remember that if she would not have messaged me but the small moments that we think are so insignificant,
God can take them and he can expand them in ways in planting seeds in other people's life that we will never see until we get to eternity.
As Terry comes, I want us to ask herself, are you sensitive enough that when the Spirit changes your plans to redirect you to do something that maybe is out of your comfort zone, you're willing to step out by faith to say, I will do this, I will follow the Lord.
See, Paul's detour led to the gospel advancement in Europe.
It changed the course of history and I dare to say it changed the course of the world because one man was obedient to listen to the Lord when doors were closed and go the way that he saw fit for the Lord's telling him to do.
What seemed like a setback became a setup for greater things. I mentioned the lady named Susan Wesley.
Susan Wesley had two sons that changed the world as well. There's also another missionary whose name is Jim Elliott. Jim Elliott, I've shared his story before, he and five other missionaries went to Ecuador to share the gospel. They went to this region that it was, they were told that this region, they're cannibals,
every religious group that has come in to evangelize them, they have killed them and eaten their bodies. And Jim Elliott and five other men said, we're going to go.
We're going to listen to the call of God, we're going to follow and we're going to go to the ends of the earth as the Bible says. These six men went in and they began preaching and they began evangelizing and each and every one of them were killed by these villages.
Each and every one of them were cannibalized and the Acuan people
continued to close their door to people. The news got back to Jim's wife, your son has been, or your husband's been killed, the other missionaries and she got the word to the other five ladies and they got together, they began praying, they began saying, God, what do we do? Our husbands loved you,
our husbands served you with their life and this is how you repay them? The story goes that Jim's wife said,
I think we need to go to these people. I think we need to be the ones that go and try to reach them. Other women are like, what are you talking about? They just killed our husbands.
She said, no, I just think that we've got to continue what our husbands were doing. And these six women boarded a plane abode at the time and they went to the Acumen people in Ecuador and they began preaching and they said, listen,
your turmoil to our husbands has drove us to come and tell you about the saving knowledge of Jesus.
The story goes that they allowed them to come in and they allowed them to begin speaking and preaching and they had interpreters and the region of this area began to know Christ because six women decided that just because the Lord saw fit to their husband, their mission wasn't done.
And we can continue to go forward. Yes, it may cause us our life. Yes, it may cause us everything, but out of loss there was great gain. And oftentimes in this loss that we see in life,
God says, I've got some great things for you if you'll just lean into me when these things happen. Paul and Silas,
Paul and Barnabas, Barnabas and Mark, I'm sure they didn't understand at the time what was going on, but they leaned into the Lord, they leaned into what was happening and God began to show great gain.
Responding to God's Call
A couple of questions. Maybe God today is calling you to return to a hard place to encourage somebody. Maybe someone's hurt you in the past.
Maybe someone's done something to you that you just need to return and pray. Maybe you can't physically go to them.
Maybe you can't go and talk to them because they're in a different region or you've lost contact, but you can begin to pray that God would heal those hurt places. Maybe he's asking you to release an old conflict and trust that he has a vision to multiply our mission.
Maybe he's nudging you to find a Timothy, to find a young man or a young woman that you can begin investing your life in, that you can begin to share your story with them so that they can one day be a leader in this church, so
they can one day begin to lead in this community, so they can begin to do some great things if we would just invest in them.
Maybe he's pressing your heart to yield to redirection. You don't even know where he's going to lead. But God's working in your heart. Whatever it may be,
the safest, most fruitful place that you can put your life is in the very middle of where God wants it.
Right in the very middle of his will and say, God, I don't know what's going on. I don't know the plans that you have for me in the future. I don't know the ideas that you have for me in the future. I'm just going to hunker down.
I'm just going to trust in you today. Whatever it may be. Maybe you're here today and you're like, I don't even know Jesus. I've been trusting.
I've been coming to church here 80 years and I've been putting my trust in something completely faith. I don't have this faith. I want this faith that they've got.
Whatever it may be, you respond as you see fit as we pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Help us this morning to serve you. Help us this morning to honor you in ways that seem radical to us but are just ordinary steps of faith.
As Paul writes in Romans 12, one, a act of sacrifice, a living sacrifice, a living obedience to him in ways that we just are just plain everyday people just trusting in you. God, help us today. Help our church to grow closer to you. Help us to honor you in everything we do. In your name we pray. Amen.
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