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Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Turn Your Obstacles into Opportunities Part 3. He will be reading out of Acts 16:11-40.
When everything’s wrong in your life and nothing is coming together as you had hoped it but you still choose to sing praise to God and you still choose to worship Him and you still choose to pray to Him that’s when you get the attention of the world.
Welcome to Hope Worth Having radio program. I’m your host Pastor Mike Sanders and today we’re going to be talking about hope. We’re going to be talking about the gospel. We’re going to be talking about how to turn your obstacles into opportunities and we’re continuing our study in Acts chapter 16 and we’re learning how the apostle dealt with opposition.
So let’s grab our Bibles and let’s continue to learn and grow together. If you have your Bible this morning I want you to join me in the book of Acts chapter 16 several weeks ago. We started this study on how to turn your obstacles into opportunity.
I want to remind you that wherever the apostle Paul went he either had a revival or it ended up being a riot and that’s what we see taking place in chapter 16. The apostle and his missionary team are headed into the city of Philippi and they are preaching the gospel but they end up being in jail.
We read that in verse 24. The Bible says that having received such a charge he put them into the inner prison and he fastened their feet in the stocks. The gospel message will always be met with obstacles but God has the ability to turn each and every obstacle into an opportunity.
We must remember as God’s people that as the gospel spread opposition will increase. Jesus taught us in John 15 verse 18, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. And so at the very outset an understanding of why someone would resist the gospel and someone would be against the salvation of souls, it is at the heart that they are resisting Jesus Christ Himself.
It is our job as His disciples to not take it personal but to recognize what is really going on. The Apostle Paul was preaching the gospel in this great city Philippi, which we have shared with you, was a gateway to Europe and would eventually become the gateway to the gospel spreading throughout all of Europe.
But as he preached it, he faced physical suffering. In these past few weeks we have learned a few principles to help us. How to turn our obstacles into opportunities. The first thing that we learned a few weeks ago was that we must work where God is working.
What you have to remember is that even when there is opposition, even when there is an obstacle in your life, God is still working. We seem to think sometimes that when there is trouble that God is not working.
That somehow this is not a part of God’s plan, but just the opposite is true. God is always working and the Bible teaches us that the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. So Christ has come to seek sinners.
God is always drawing people to Him and He uses the circumstances of life to open people’s eyes and to help them to see the truth. So how do I turn my obstacles into opportunities? It is first to work where God is working.
Second of all, we learned that we must expect obstacles. As soon as the Lord starts blessing in our life, as soon as He starts working in divine ways, I want you to know the devil is going to be fighting.
The devil is not taking a vacation. The devil is not going to say, well, look, I’m going to just take a step back and let the work of God and the cause of Christ to move forward. No, just the opposite.
We see this in verse 14 of chapter 16 that a certain woman named Lydia, she heard us. She was a seller of purple. This is where God was working. He was working in the life of Lydia and she was from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God and the Lord opened her heart.
So Paul goes to Philippi. God is working in this small group of women and they are meeting for prayer. Paul shows up at the prayer meeting and the Lord opens her heart when she hears the gospel and the Bible teaches us that she came to Christ.
But then we see the opposite in verse 16. God was working in Lydia’s heart. She and her family came to God to believe in the Lord. But look at verse 16. Now it happened as we went to prayer that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling.
And so she was going around sarcastically and deceitfully trying to convince others that these men were servants of the Most High, which was true. But the problem is, as we’ve taught you, that she was trying to gain trust with the believers and the disciples so that she could suck them in to false teaching, that she could suck them into fortune-telling, that she could be that charlatan that would take advantage of their genuineness,
their authenticity, and she would make money off of them. What does the Bible say in verse 18? And she did this for many days. But Paul greatly annoyed, turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.
And he came out of that very hour. This upset her handlers because she had other people who were using her, this fortune teller, to make money. And so they became upset, we see in verse 19, that they seized Paul and Silas and they dragged him into the marketplace to the authorities.
What is the result? Look at verse 24. Having received such a charge, he put them in a prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. So here, people are being saved. Then there’s opposition. There’s an obstacle here.
What does the apostle do? Well, that’s the third thing I want you to learn on how to turn your obstacles into opportunities. And that is to keep planting seeds in your life, to keep planting seeds. You know, most of the time when we face an obstacle, what do we do?
We give up. But I wanna remind you that God turns every obstacle into an opportunity if we will respond the way he is calling us to respond. And I want you to look at verse 25. Remember verse 24, don’t forget that.
You can’t understand verse 25 until you understand verse 24. And that is that they are in the inner prison and they are in stocks. Their hands are chained and their feet are chained and they are hardly able to move.
Now friends, it’s not like our jails and prisons. This prison is not fancy where they have three square meals a day and everything is clean and they have big TVs. And you say, how do you know these things, Pastor?
But I just want you to know, administering and trying to reach out, we’ve been there and we see some of these things. But here’s the thing, I want you to see what they’re dealing with, what their circumstances are and how they respond, how they keep planting seeds for the sake of life.
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now look at verse 25. But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awakening from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself.
But Paul called with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm, for we are all here. Then he called for a light and he ran in and he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?
So they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and he washed their stripes.
And immediately he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them. And he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household. And when it was day, the magistrates sent the officers saying, let those men go.
So the keeper of the prison reported these words of Paul saying, the magistrates have sent to let you go. Now therefore depart and go in peace. But Paul said to them, they have beaten us openly, uncondemned Romans and have thrown us into prison.
And now do they put us out secretly? No, indeed. Let them come themselves and get us out. And the officers told these words to the magistrates and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans.
Then they came and pleaded with them and brought them out and asked them to depart from the city. So they went out of the prison and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, they encouraged them and departed.
What a powerful passage of scripture. Now in this passage of scriptures, I want to teach you how to keep planting seeds. Yes, you got problems in your life. You got struggles in your life. You got circumstances that are not perfect and things are not coming together just as you had planned.
But I want to tell you something that God wants you to keep planting seeds. He wants you to stay on mission for him. He wants you to keep moving the ball forward for the cause and the glory of Christ.
Here we find the apostle. He was overflowing with joy. And when he realized his situation, he recognized he had a ministry opportunity. He realized that even though there was an obstacle, there was an opportunity to advance.
the cause of Jesus Christ. The Apostle wrote to the Philippians, and he said, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. Have you ever thought about that?
How that God allows circumstances in your life that you might be able to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ? Have you ever considered that God may put you on a difficult path so that your path would cross with other people who need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ?
You see, here they were in a prison, and they had unexpected problems, and certainly this was not what they had planned on. But what did God do? He had opened a new door, and God has other plans sometimes, plans that are not ours, plans that are different so that we might be able to fulfill His will.
Think about this, the Bible says that man plans his ways but the Lord directs his steps. You get up every day, you got a schedule, you got an agenda, you might even have a calendar and you have a plan of things you want to get done and you got a to-do list of things you need to achieve this day but you know what?
God throws a wrench in all of it and it’s a big mess and you find out that you’re on a detour but God uses that detour so that you could advance the cause of Jesus Christ. How do I keep planting seeds?
How do I do that, pastor? Number one, I want you to write this down, you need to choose joy. You need to choose joy. Would you recall with me in this passage again that after being beaten by the Roman guards, their muscles were aching, they were stiffening up, they were put into a smelly inner cell that was filled with darkness, there was nothing but cold and darkness and hopelessness in the room.
I’m sure that we would have been okay saying, you know what? It’s okay to be mad at God but instead of cursing God, Paul and Silas chose to pray and sing songs of praise. I want to ask you a question, what would you have done?
I have to be honest with you that if I was in a prison, I’m not sure that I would be praying and I would be singing songs to God but that’s exactly what Paul and Silas did. They were praying to God and they were praising God.
They had chosen that they would be joyful people. They would be joyful people and that’s what I’m challenging you to do this morning is that you have the joy of the Lord in you no matter what your circumstances are.
So many people are striving for happiness. And we know that happiness is not out there, friends. Happiness is not in the world. Happiness, or if we could say this, joy is in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Life is about relationships. And if you can’t get relationships right, you can’t get anything right in your life. And that ought to be the priority of your life. When you come to the end of your life, you’re not gonna say, boy, I wish I had another hour in the office.
Let me tell you something, friends. I’ve been by many people that God was ready to promote out of this world. And I tell you that every one of them, what they want is their family around them. And they want to know that their faith is real.
You see, life’s about relationships, my relationship with God and my relationship with others. And that’s why that has to be the priority of my life. And you might think, well, Pastor Mike, what are you trying to teach us?
I’m trying to teach you what Jesus taught us. And that is that we are to love God and we are to love people. You love God and you love people. And that’s the key. to you having a joyful life that is the key of you living an abundant life the psalmist said the lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime and in the night his song shall be with me a prayer to the god of my life you see friends if you want to be able to sing in the night if you want to sing in the difficult circumstances of your life if you want to be a person of prayer then you’ve got to have a relationship with the lord jesus christ jesus said the thief comes not but to steal and to kill and to destroy i am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly why did jesus come that you and i might have life that we might have eternal life and let me tell you something about eternal life it’s not just the quantity of life that you’ll be forever with jesus yes but it is the quality of life and i’m not talking about the fact that you’ll have everything perfect in your life i’m talking about that you’ll have the peace of god and the joy of christ in your heart that no matter what you face in life that you are going to be able to put your focus on christ even in those difficult circumstances and you’re gonna have an abundant life jesus christ is the reason to have a song in your heart let me tell you something god’s people have always been a singing people music is not the source of your joy jesus is the source of your joy and music and singing is the outgrowth of a relationship with jesus christ and when you’re feeding that every day when you’re spending time with the lord every day when you’re in the bible every day when you are praying every day listen when you face a bump in the road when you face times of darkness when you face those difficulties in your life you’re going to be like paul and sylas you’re going to be singing at the midnight of your crisis and i would encourage you to have a strong relationship listen to what jesus Jesus said in John 15,
verse 11, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be what church for? You see, God doesn’t want you to just have half joy. He doesn’t want you just to have a little bit of joy, but he wants you to have his full joy.
Doesn’t mean that you’re always slapping everybody high five. It doesn’t mean that you’re walking around giving everybody hugs, but what it does mean is that even when you’re grieving, you have the joy of the Lord in your heart.
Why? Because your hope is not in this world and your hope is not in the circumstances of your life and your hope is not in how people respond to you or treat you, but rather your hope is in your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and you know that he’s come, that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly, that you might not only have the quantity of life, but that you might have the quality of life in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.
What does Jesus want from me? That we would exhibit joy in every circumstance of our life. The psalmist said in Psalm 5.11, but rejoice all who take refuge in you. Sing for joy forever and may you shelter them that those who love your name may rejoice in you.
I am confident that the grace of God can make and help and strengthen each of us to sing even when we are suffering. You as the follower of Christ should never be ashamed to sing the songs that God has put upon your heart.
Songs that remind us of our relationship with God, and songs that grow out of our relationship with God. So I wanna encourage you this morning to choose joy. And at the heart of not only praising God and singing is your prayer life.
Consider this church that people that are joyful, people that are quick to praise God even through trials, are people of prayer. Because let me tell you something about prayer that you need to understand.
It is more than just a discipline. It is more than just a spiritual act. It is the mean by which God imparts his sustaining and sufficient grace to you. When you are filled with the grace of God that has been channeled to your heart through the means of humbling yourself before God Almighty and praying to him consistently and constantly I tell you that what will happen to you when you are facing the trials and darkness of life,
you will sing the praises. of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s why prayer is important to your life. Now the second thing that I want you to learn, we’re learning how do we keep planting seeds.
We choose joy in all of our circumstances. But number two, we are ready to give an answer. Yes, we are ready to give an answer. I want you to go back to verse 25. I don’t want you to see something here that I think’s important for us to remember this morning.
We already noted that Paul and Silas in difficult circumstances were praying, they were singing. But did you catch the last of that verse? We often focus on the beginning of the verse, but have you ever thought about the last few words there?
The prisoners were listening to them. You see, I want you to understand something. There’s a world that’s watching you. They’re not impressed with your God that blesses you when everything’s going right in your life.
They’re not impressed that you praise the Lord and you get up and go to church on Sunday and that you fail. safely serve the Lord, that you sacrifice for his cause. But here’s when the world takes note and is watching you, when everything’s crashing in your life and everything’s wrong in your life and nothing is coming together as you had hoped it, but you still choose to sing praise to God and you still choose to worship him and you still choose to pray to him.
That’s when you get the attention of the world. But I want you to know that the Lord uses our suffering to open doors of witnessing for him. And it’s our responsibility to be ready to give an answer.
So we come down to verse 26. The Bible says, suddenly there was this great earthquake and so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were open and everyone’s chains were loosed.
Now remember, they were all listening to Paul and Silas. The keeper of the prison awakened from sleep seeing that the prison doors were open. He supposed the prisons had fled and drew his sword and was about to be killed.
Why would he do that? Because Roman soldiers who allowed a prisoner to escape were executed and therefore they just said, look, if this is our fate that we’re gonna die, we might as well just take our lives then to suffer the consequences.
But did you see what the apostle did? He said in verse 28, Paul called out with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm for we are all here. Not only are people listening, but people are watching how you handle your problems, how you respond to your circumstances.
They could have all been very selfish and said, let’s get out of here. God has caused this earthquake, let’s get out of here. And I know that many of you are trying to run from your problem. You’re trying to run from your circumstances and you’re trying to run from that relationship and you’re trying to run from that person and it’s easy to run, it’s easy to hop churches.
and it’s easy to go from this person and that person and that place, it’s easy to do all that stuff rather than have to deal with the reality what God is calling you to face. Are you with me, church?
What did Paul do? He did not run, nor did his team. They did not run, but look at verse 29. The Bible says he called for a light. He ran in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas and he brought them out and he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?
Isn’t that glorious? Let me ask you a question. If somebody asks you, what do I gotta do to be saved? Could you even explain it to them? Are you ready to give an answer for the hope that lives within you?
Are you able to explain the gospel to someone? Are you able to present the plan of salvation? Are you able to walk somebody through the Romans Road and show them that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?
Are you able to explain to them that God commends his love towards us yet while we were sinners, Christ died for us? Are you able to show them that the Bible says whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved?
Are you able to present the answer that the world is looking for? Could you answer this question? It’s a good question and it’s a beautiful question when God brings someone to that point for God has ordained that humans would proclaim the gospel to humanity.
God has chosen to use you and he has chosen to use me and he has chosen to use all of us church that we might answer the one question what must I do to be saved? What we witness in these verses is a miraculous conversion.
We see a hardened jailer humbly come to faith and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and not just the jailer but his whole family. What must I do to be saved? Well friends you might be asking that question this morning.
You may have trickled in here and you may be wondering what must I do to be saved? Let me tell you something, it’s not about religion. It’s not an invitation to be more ritualistic. It is an invitation to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
You see there’s no magical formula but there is this wonderful person Jesus and Jesus said that I am the way, the truth and the life. And no man comes to the Father but by me. Salvation comes through faith when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is a matter of what we believe and who we believe in. The gospel is the object of our faith, but the gospel message, its focus is upon Jesus Christ. If I wanna be saved today, I must be willing to humble myself before God.
I must be willing to be honest before God and say, Lord, I’m a sinner. Now that’s a big step because I wanna tell you something powerful in your life that you should never forget. You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge.
If you’re not willing to admit that you’re a sinner, you won’t become a saint. You won’t become a person who has the wonderful blessing of receiving the forgiveness of your sins. So it starts right there.
I have to admit that I’m a sinner. Second of all, what do I gotta do? I gotta believe. that Jesus died on the cross for me, not just that he died for the world. The Bible says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not what, church?
But have everlasting life. I still want you to know that if you’re here today and you’d like to know what to do to be saved, I want you to know that not only do you have to acknowledge that you’re a sinner and believe in Christ, but you have to call upon the Lord to save your soul.
You have to call upon Christ to forgive you of your sins. I tell people that getting saved is as easy as A, B, C. Acknowledge, believe, and call upon the Lord. But I want you to understand something.
When I was a little boy, 11 years old, and the preacher got up there and he preached on John 3 16, and he told me that I was a sinner, I didn’t even know I was a sinner until I came to church. Nobody had ever told me that I was a sinner.
I didn’t know I had sinned against the holy God. I didn’t realize that my God was righteous and that the only way I could go to heaven was to have his righteousness. And the only way that I could have his righteousness was to admit that I was a sinner.
I didn’t know that. And I was just 11 years old. But I want you to know when he told me that Jesus Christ went to the cross and died for my sins, and if I would believe in him, that I could have eternal life.
And I was like, well, if you’d stop preaching, I would get saved. I didn’t even know what to do. But he just said, if you’ll believe, I was ready to believe. Didn’t know what to do. And that’s the kicker.
That when he finally said, call on the name of the Lord, and he invited anyone who wanted to be saved to come forward, and I came forward, my brother came forward, my sister came forward, and I know this is crazy and it’s unusual, and it just seems the way that God worked in our lives, I’m not saying he does this for everybody, but in that first time that we heard that we were sinners and that Christ died for our sins,
and that if we would just call upon the name of the Lord and be saved, we were ready. Now some people are hard-headed, amen? This lady in the church, she said, pastor, would you meet with my husband?
And for seven weeks I did, and he finally came to Christ, praise the Lord. Listen, on that day, for me, my brother and sister, we came to Christ on the first time, and we went to the altar, and there a man was ready, and he showed us how to call upon the name of the Lord.
And I wonder how many of us would be ready. You just never know when somebody wants to know what they gotta do to be saved. As the gospel spreads, opposition will always increase. Jesus reminded us, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.
So I pray that today, these principles will be applied to our hearts, and we’ll always see great. opportunities in the obstacles that we face, and we ask that you will continue to remember that in Christ there is hope worth having.