Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for everything that you're doing in our lives this morning.
We thank you that you alone are victorious over sin, over death, over the devil.
And Lord, we praise you as God of the mountain.
How many of you know God as God of the mountain?
Amen.
If he has done something for you, if he has healed you, if he has delivered you,
just give him some praise this morning.
We thank you, Lord.
We thank you.
How many of you know him as the God of the valley?
Amen.
So, Lord, I just pray over every person here this morning that is worshiping you as the God of the valley,
of the valley of decision, the valley of disappointment, the valley of pain, Lord.
And I pray over these things that we all carry in our hearts.
And, Lord, I pray that you can bring freedom, that you can bring deliverance,
that you can set people free from addictions, from anger, from relational friction, Lord,
that you can heal hearts, that you can keep households together,
that you can bring jobs and opportunity, Lord, because you're the only one who can.
So, Lord, we confess that we come to the end of ourselves.
And we invite you into our lives.
We invite you into our mess.
We invite you into everything, Lord.
And we say, you are Lord of all.
So, Lord, we thank you for the finished work that you have done on the cross.
We thank you that it is sufficient to set us free from everything that encumbers us.
So, Lord, we celebrate your victory this morning.
And we celebrate your soon-coming reign over all.
In Jesus' mighty name.
Everyone said, amen.
You may be seated.
Hallelujah.
All right.
I'd like to welcome everyone to Bridge Gospel this morning.
I'm glad that you're here with us.
And just like to thank Ashley for coming out and joining us for worship this morning.
We have our little routine up here that, you know, we got to get through.
So, I just want to thank everyone.
If this is your first time for coming out, I'd especially like to welcome you.
I know it can be awkward to visit a new church.
You don't know if you're taking somebody's spot.
You don't know, like, where, you know, you can have your coffee, not have your coffee.
Just make yourself at home, and I'm just glad that you're here with us this morning.
I pray that God will bless you in your time with us.
I'd also like to welcome everyone who is visiting with us online.
I believe that God will bless you right where you are.
Amen.
So, we're not going to pass a bucket or a plate for the offering or anything like that.
We're not going to put anybody on the spot.
We have a box in the back.
You're welcome to make your offering back there, or you can give online at our website.
There's instructions for that online.
So, I will pray for the offering.
Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for the ways that you provide and care for us.
We acknowledge you as a source of all things in our life.
We acknowledge you as our provider.
And we thank you for everything that you bring into our lives, every source of increase.
And how can we worship you but by giving back, Lord?
So, we thank you for the opportunity to give back.
And we know that it may leave our hands, but it never leaves our lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Hallelujah.
So, we're going to be in Acts 16 this morning, if you'd like to start turning there.
We've been in a series called Living in a Supernatural World.
And right now, we're talking about some of the spiritual gifts that the Apostle Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians.
Today, we're going to be talking about the gift called the working of miracles, or your Bible may say the working of powers.
So, you ever try to start a car, and the battery was dead, and you put the key in it, and, you know, maybe it clicks.
Maybe the little seatbelt buzzer comes on, and maybe it starts to, like, want to turn over, but it never starts.
And you try again.
And at first, every time you turn the key, you think, well, maybe this time.
Maybe this time it'll be different.
Maybe this thing will get started.
And after trying that a few times, something changes, right?
The battery hasn't, what's that, Richard?
It doesn't make any noise.
Right, it doesn't make any noise.
And, you know, the battery hasn't changed.
The car hasn't changed, but something in you starts to change, right?
And you may keep turning the key, but you stop expecting the car to start, right?
And your hand is kind of going through this motion, but hope has kind of left, and it's turned into frustration, right?
And you're starting to think about your problems and where you have to go.
So, and I think that that doesn't just happen with cars, right?
You see, we tend to lose hope when we repeatedly are confronted with disappointment, right?
When we keep looking for a job, but we don't expect a call.
When we keep trying to mend a relationship that we have, but the other person just isn't receiving it.
And we keep fighting our same weaknesses over and over again, but, you know,
freedom is something that happens for those people, right?
So you keep showing up.
You keep participating.
You keep kind of doing what responsible people are supposed to do.
But expectation starts to quietly disappear.
And after a while, you start to learn how to protect yourself from disappointment.
You lower your hope.
So maybe it won't hurt as bad.
You stop imagining a different future altogether.
You stop talking about what could be.
And you call it, well, I'm just going to accept things the way they are.
I'm going to accept the facts.
I'm going to move on.
I'm going to be realistic.
But sometimes what we call being realistic is disappointment that has settled into our soul.
But, you see, disappointment is not the whole story.
You see, I think life has a way of teaching us to not expect much.
And, you know, enough closed doors and enough dead ends can make you want to stop knocking and stop asking.
And enough broken promises can make people stop trusting.
And enough unanswered prayers, well, they can start to make you wonder what God is up to, right?
And at first, you know, you look at something and you say, well, this needs to change.
And then you think, oh, it's going to change.
And then you say, well, I hope it changes.
And then it starts to turn, well, I don't know if this is going to change.
I don't think it's going to change.
It's never going to change.
And eventually, it just, you stop thinking about it altogether.
And, you see, prolonged disappointment does not always make us angry.
I think a lot of times it makes us really quiet.
You see, this disappointment, it can be a very subtle and very sneaky thief.
And it can almost settle into our lives like a low-grade depression.
And it shapes our thoughts, our decisions.
And eventually, it has the power to shift the entire direction of our lives.
And sometimes it teaches us to kind of live around the broken things, the broken pieces of our lives.
And we'll just kind of adjust our routines around it and lower our expectations around it.
And we'll somehow convince ourselves that expecting nothing is maybe wiser than hoping again.
And this resignation will enter into our spiritual lives.
You see, you can keep praying and no longer expecting anything to change.
And you can keep worshiping and raising your hands, but quietly in your mind, you're saying, well, this is permanent.
And you can keep reading scripture and see the promises of God and think, well, those are for another time, another place, another person.
You see, some of us have not stopped believing that God exists, but we've stopped believing that God will come and interrupt anything.
You see, we can believe that God forgives our sins.
We can believe that God loves people.
We can believe that we'll be received into heaven.
But we can start to quietly believe that, well, God's not going to come and confront this darkness, this problem, this illness.
That he's not going to come and restore hope.
That he's not going to come in and do the impossible.
You see, some of us have not lost our faith in God, but we've lost our expectation of God.
So what do you do?
What do you do when your experience has taught you to stop expecting?
What do you do when you still believe in God, but you have stopped expecting him to intervene in your life?
And the prison is real, and the chains are real, and the darkness is real, and every natural possibility has been completely exhausted.
So for the last several weeks, we've been in this series, we've been talking about a number of spiritual gifts that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians.
And he says that the Holy Spirit manifests his presence, literally makes his presence known through the people of God for the common good or for the benefit of all people.
And among those things, he names the working of miracles.
Your Bible may say the working of powers.
And Paul is describing these moments where God goes way beyond human ability, way beyond human understanding and limitation.
And he very clearly acts in divine power.
And the form may differ, what he does may differ, but the reality is the same, that God acts.
And before we talk about miraculous power, we also have to talk about discernment,
because the Bible does not teach that every supernatural event comes from God.
Now, our culture will offer us two different options.
One says, well, nothing supernatural is real, that this world is all that there is.
Now, the other says, well, if something is supernatural or spiritual or powerful or unexplored, well, it must be good.
But you see, the Bible rejects both, and this story really shows that.
You see, the Holy Spirit is real, miracles are real, but deception is also very real.
We live in a world of good and evil.
So the question isn't just, well, was that supernatural?
The question is, where did it come from?
What was its source?
What was behind it?
What did it produce?
And who did it glorify?
Did it enslave people or did it set them free?
Did it draw attention to itself or did it lead people to Jesus?
And this is exactly the tension we see in our story in Acts 16.
That's why I titled today's message, I called it The Whole Story.
So if you'd join me in Acts 16, I'm starting at verse 16.
It says,
Now, as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit that enabled
her to foretell the future by supernatural means.
She brought her owners a great prophet by fortune-telling.
She followed behind Paul and us and kept crying out,
These men are servants of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.
She continued to do this for many days.
But Paul became greatly annoyed and turned and said to the spirit,
I command you in the name of Jesus to come out of her.
And it came out of her at once.
But when her owners saw that their hope of profit was gone,
they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.
When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said,
These men are throwing our city into confusion.
They are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us to accept or practice,
since we are Romans.
The crowd joined the attack against them,
and the magistrates tore the clothes off Paul and Silas and ordered them to be beaten with rods.
After they had beaten them severely, they threw them into prison and commanded the jailer to guard them securely.
Receiving such orders, he threw them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.
And the rest of the prisoners were listening to them.
Suddenly, a great earthquake occurred so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
Immediately, all the doors flew open and the bonds of all the prisoners came loose.
When the jailer woke up and saw the doors of the prison standing open,
he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, because he assumed the prisoners had escaped.
But Paul called out loudly,
Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.
Calling for lights, the jailer rushed in and fell down, trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas.
Then he brought them outside and asked,
Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
They replied, believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him, along with all those who were in his house.
Amen.
So Paul and Silas were on their way to prayer.
They were on their way to do the right thing.
And they encounter this slave girl who is possessed by what Luke describes as like a spirit of divination.
And Luke, he's the author of Acts, he's describing this as some sort of like real spiritual power.
It's very strange.
And he treats this as like an authentic event.
He doesn't talk that it's trickery or deception.
He says, this is really happening.
And I think that's a little bit shocking.
But that's what the story says.
So we'll deal with that in a minute.
And it says that she earns her owners a great deal of money.
And, you know, I want to talk about the demonica a second.
I want to show you something very important about what is happening to this girl.
She's enslaved twice.
You see it?
She's enslaved by her owners.
And she's enslaved by the spirit that is operating and controlling her.
It's amazing how the devil is tricky like that.
And when she says, what she says about Paul and Silas, it sounds true.
These men are servants of the Most High God, right?
But you see, her source is wrong.
Her motive is wrong.
She's using it to torment them.
She's not confessing Christ.
She's trying to attach herself to these guys and disturb what they're trying to do and draw away from their credibility.
She's mocking them.
And, you know, after hearing this for a while, Paul, he's had enough.
And he says, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.
And immediately, the spirit leaves.
Now, you notice what Paul doesn't do.
You know, he doesn't sit there and he doesn't interview the spirit.
He doesn't play 99 questions.
Where are you from?
Who you are?
You know, what are you all about?
You know, he doesn't put on a show.
You know, he doesn't attempt to, like, impress the crowd, like, hey, everybody, watch what I'm going to do.
You know, there's no big conference.
There's no big speaker in town.
It's just the authority and the presence and the power of Jesus, right?
You see, the power wasn't in Paul's technique.
It was in the power of Jesus.
You see, her freedom, however, it costs her owners greatly.
It costs them their income.
And when they realize that that's gone, they're the ones dragging Paul and Silas before the authorities.
The crowd joins in.
They get beaten.
They get thrown in this prison.
When Roman prisons are not nice, they don't have cable TV.
So they're fastened.
They're in the inner part of the prison.
This is a bad deal.
Now, I'm sure nobody here has ever done the right thing and then had everything go wrong in their life.
I'm sure nobody has had that happen.
You know, I'm sure nobody here has started to follow God and had their life get harder.
Right?
You know, this just does not happen to good Christian people.
I mean, you know, I got saved.
I got saved.
And everything was just perfect.
I mean, I got, everybody loved me.
Everybody agreed with me.
You know, my cars never broke down.
My roof never leaked.
Like, none of these things happened.
You see, we need to get this thing out in the open.
You see, if you belong to Christ, you see, suffering is not proof that God is against you.
Right?
You see, God loved Jesus.
He loved Jesus.
But there was suffering.
You see, stuff went wrong.
You know, from a human perspective, you know, Jesus was betrayed.
He was falsely accused.
He was beaten.
He was abandoned.
And he was crucified.
And from a human perspective, it looked like everything was falling apart.
You see, the cross looked like complete and utter.
It made a fool of Jesus and his followers in front of everyone.
But the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom.
Amen?
You see, your hardship is not proof that God has given up on you.
Your hardship is not proof that God has abandoned you.
You see, Jesus, he entered the deepest, darkest parts of our suffering.
And that nothing could separate us from the love of God.
And just because you're struggling does not mean that God does not care.
You see, we love identifying with the victory and the resurrection of Jesus.
And before that glory and that resurrection, the Bible says that Jesus emptied himself and he was willing to get nailed to something.
But Jesus' suffering on the cross was not the whole story.
You see, it's like if you bought a dream car or a dream truck.
Because I don't drive cars.
I drive trucks that can run over things.
But imagine buying a truck, right, or a car.
And years later, someone asked you, hey, tell me the story about that car.
And all they did was sit there and talk about signing the paperwork at the dealership.
You see, the paperwork mattered, but without it, you never got the car.
So you see, the paperwork was the means, but it was the car and the places you went and the road trips and the family vacations.
That was the thing you were signing up for.
You see, the cross was the decisive means and the decisive moment of our redemption where we were literally bought back.
But the resurrection, the glory, and the kingdom are what that redemption was, that's where it was taking us.
You see, it was the victory over the sin and the death and the devil and the kingdom to inherit.
And the streets paved with gold and no more death and crying and suffering anymore.
That's what the cross was about.
And there is a day coming where the suffering ends, the tears in, and the pain ends.
But that is the rest of the story.
Your suffering is not the whole story.
And by faith, you can suffer without fully understanding what is going on and still trust that God is calling you to something greater than you can make sense of in this very moment.
So what I want you to see is the value of the suffering that you face.
And I also want you to believe that God can turn it around.
And he can turn it around in an instant, but nowhere does the Bible say that God owes us some explanation for anything happening in our lives.
He just asks us to be still and know, to be still and know that he is God and have faith that there is more to the story.
So at midnight, Paul and Silas, they start praying.
Then they start singing.
And I think the other prisoners were listening.
It says they were listening.
I think maybe they were annoyed.
Maybe they were confused.
Maybe they were curious.
And this earthquake, it shakes the prison, and the doors open, the chains fall off, and Paul and Silas do not run.
And the jailer is assuming that all the prisoners, he's ready to kill himself because he knows what his boss is going to do.
And Paul cries out.
He says, do not harm yourself.
We're all here.
And the jailer is there, and he's saying, what must I do to be saved?
And they answer him.
He says, believe in the Lord, and you will be saved.
And you see how this whole thing, it starts with the deliverance of the girl.
And then they go to prison.
And then there's this suffering and uncertainty.
And the whole prison gets shaken.
And the whole thing ends with someone coming to Jesus.
And it goes on to say his whole household was saved.
You see, the power of God and the working of miracles is not given to entertain people, impress people, exploit people, or exalt anyone.
The power of God is given to set people free and to lead people to Jesus.
You see, the first supernatural manifestation in our whole story, it's not even from God.
You see, it says that this slave girl, she possessed some genuine supernatural ability.
It said that she had the ability to predict the future, but it was not the Holy Spirit.
And that tells us that something can be supernatural but not be holy.
Something can be impressive and still not be from God.
And something can contain elements of truth but still have the wrong source behind it.
And you see, the Bible that we've been carrying around tells us that these things are very real.
And that they're not harmless.
And they're not just tricks.
And I think that should make us think twice about the supernatural world that we do live in.
I think it should make us concerned about the deception that's happening in our own city and in our own culture.
And you see, we can't be naive and say, well, you know, all this witchcraft and tarot around us
and all of the evil things in our culture is just make-believe and there's nothing behind it.
When the Bible is showing us in this story and in many others that there is a very real battle between good and evil.
You see, those things are an opening to deception and death and the demonic.
And if you've had those things in your house or engaged in those things, turn and get rid of those things.
You see, there is a spiritual battle that is happening.
And we have a very wise enemy and he is not powerless.
And he is an enemy that has no love or no compassion for anyone.
And Scripture continuously warns God's people against seeking these types of things outside and apart from him.
And if there's nothing bad that could happen, then these Bible warnings, they're in vain.
They're for nothing, right?
But see, the Bible says that the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
How many of you know that?
But Jesus came so that you may have life and have life more abundantly.
Amen.
And if you are looking for something supernatural, we have a God who raises the dead.
We have a God who heals people.
We have a God who sets people free.
So the Spirit was controlling this girl.
Her owners are exploiting her.
She's enslaved twice.
And people had built a whole business around her slavery, her bondage.
And then Paul speaks one sentence.
I command you in the name of Jesus to come out of her.
There's no ritual.
There's no spectacle.
There's no performance.
It is simply the authority of Jesus acting through his words.
And immediately she is set free.
And it's important for us to know that the power was never Paul's.
All the power belonged to Jesus.
See, the gifts, they don't belong to us.
It's the Spirit that gives them freely through us.
It's the Spirit that empowers us.
We are vessels.
You see, one of the dangers in every generation is the vessel being confused with the source.
People become fascinated with personalities and we begin talking about people that we follow
and their gifting and not God who gives the gift.
But you see, spiritual gifts were never for that.
They were acts of grace.
They were given for the benefit of all.
The miracle does not prove how powerful Paul is or how spiritual he is or anything.
It reveals how powerful Jesus is.
And you see this contrast through the story.
The demonic power uses the girl.
Jesus sets her free.
The demonic power enriches her owners.
Jesus sets her free.
The demonic power turns a person into a product.
Jesus sets her free.
One power enslaves, the other liberates.
One exploits, the other serves.
And that distinction should help us discern what God is doing in the Spirit today.
Anyway, the ministry of the Holy Spirit will always magnify Christ and he'll always restore people.
The gifts of the Spirit are given for the common good.
They're not given so someone can build a platform or bank out of the desperation of hurting people.
Verse 19 says,
When her owner saw that their hope of profit was gone.
Think about that.
Their hope depended on her slavery.
Her freedom was bad for business.
You see, there are always systems that will profit when people remain enslaved.
There's people that profit from addiction.
They profit from fear.
They profit from people being manipulated.
Look in our culture.
People are in bondage.
And the gospel threatens every system that depends on human bondage.
And that's why that opposition shows up so quickly.
You see, the owners never say,
Wow, we missed that girl.
Wow, she was great.
We miss her.
They never say that.
They never celebrate her freedom.
Wow, she's finally free.
They only care about what they lost.
But when Jesus breaks her bondage,
everything profiting from that bondage reaches out and resists.
You see, and this opposition is disguised as concern for public order.
Now, these are ancient world problems.
Like, these are not problems we have, right?
Right?
Just, this is an old story.
You know, their accusations, they sound respectable.
You know, this is how we do things around here.
Don't go bringing your Jewish, you know, nonsense.
Don't be bringing that Christians.
Don't be bringing that to work.
Don't be bringing that into the public square.
These are ancient problems.
So, this woman got free.
These powerful people are losing their money.
You see, the kingdom of God has always been a threat to exploitation.
And you notice what happens next.
Paul and Silas, they set her free.
And now they're in prison.
You see, walking in the power of God does not guarantee an easier life.
Sometimes, our obedience creates more problems.
Sometimes, our faithfulness will cost us our comfort.
And sometimes, serving someone else means suffering ourselves.
You see, Paul doesn't use his spiritual power to protect himself or benefit himself.
He uses it to set people free.
Remember, they were mocking Jesus on the cross.
Oh, if you're the son of God, why don't you come down from there?
But that's the pattern of Christ.
Jesus did not use his power to avoid the cross.
He used his power to accomplish the will of the Father.
You see, the servant's not greater than the master.
You see, some people want the gifts of the Spirit to show up.
They want the miracles and the healings, but they don't want the character of Christ.
You see, we want miracles that make life easier.
We want power that maybe it increases our influence and our audience.
And, you know, we want to talk and always have people clap.
And Acts 16, this story, reminds us that obedience sometimes leads to misunderstanding and hardship.
And suffering.
You see, and the question is, you know, it's never, will this make me look powerful?
The question is, well, is this going to set someone free?
You see, the Holy Spirit doesn't empower us to be admired.
He empowers us so people have a living encounter with Jesus.
Amen?
This is why the gifts are always expressions of love.
So the girl is free.
Paul and Silas are beaten and they're in prison.
And that's the moment where we all go, why, God?
Why?
Why?
This miracle happened and the circumstances got worse.
Why, God?
You know, if miracles always produced immediate comfort, the story would be over here.
But now the story goes a little deeper.
The story prepares us to discover something even greater about ourselves and about God.
You see, the working of miracles is not only about God changing circumstances.
Sometimes it starts with God sustaining people inside of them.
And I don't think the greatest miracle was the prison doors opening.
I think the greatest miracle was that they were worshiping before they even did.
One of the most dangerous things about disappointment is that it convinced us that today's condition is tomorrow's destiny.
That today's condition is tomorrow's destiny.
And we start saying, well, this is just how it is.
This is just how they are.
This is just who I am.
And this anger and frustration will never be over.
It will never leave.
It's just who I am.
And we take the things that God promises to heal and deliver us from and transform us and renew in us.
And we build our identity around them staying the same.
You see, a diagnosis may explain your present condition.
But it doesn't have the authority to define your future.
God does.
And I'm not saying that anyone's illness or pain or struggle is not real.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying that it isn't the whole story.
Amen.
I'm saying that I don't want any of us to become comfortable with less than what God promises us.
Or stop believing that God is still able to heal, restore, deliver, and transform.
And some of you came in today in a prison that nobody else knows about.
And your prison isn't made of bars and steel and stone, but it's made of disappointment.
And maybe you've been praying for a relationship that's still falling apart.
And you're praying for a child that is still far from God.
And you've prayed for healing, but the pain is in your face every day.
And somewhere along the way, maybe your prayers got quieter.
Not because you stopped believing in God, but because you stopped expecting him to move.
You still love God.
You still come to church.
You're here.
You still worship.
But somewhere along the way, you started treating what you could see as the whole story.
And hope started to leave your expectations of God.
You see, the greatest prison we face is not around us.
It's the one that forms inside of us.
And we can rob ourselves through unbelief and fear more than any villain or scoundrel or devil or demon ever could.
And the devil doesn't even have to bother you if he's taught you to imprison yourself.
And after a while, that fear and disappointment is so sneaky, it starts to sound like your own voice.
It sounds safe.
It sounds reasonable.
It can sound very wise.
Sometimes it even talks in religious language.
But you see, fear is more than just expecting the worst.
Fear mistakes the current situation in the current chapter of your life for the whole story.
And it tells you, don't hope again.
Don't reach again.
Don't believe again.
You already know how this ends.
But God has not given us a spirit of fear.
He's given us power, love, and self-control.
And fear is this prison.
It says this is just how it's always going to be.
But it does not know the whole story.
You see, Paul and Silas, they were free before the chains even fell off.
They were free before the earthquake even happened.
You see, faith worships before it knows the whole story.
Because it knows the one who does.
And their worship, it wasn't them pretending that everything was okay.
Their worship was just saying, well, this isn't the final word.
We were at the men's Bible study yesterday, and we went through part of Job.
And Job lost everything.
And he said, he said in the midst of his despair, I know my Redeemer lives.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
And maybe that's where some of us need to adjust our perspective today.
Maybe that's where some of us need to change our thinking today.
Not because we've committed some scandalous, adulterous sin, but because we've allowed disappointment to become a fixture in our theology.
We've quietly accepted limits in our lives that God has never spoken over us, never had for us.
And we've let yesterday's disappointments become our faith for today.
And we've become faithful in religious activity, but we've become poor in our spiritual expectations.
But you see, Jesus has not changed.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The Holy Spirit has not retired.
He has not stopped setting people free.
The gifts of the Spirit have not ceased.
The gospel has not lost its power.
The name of Jesus still has authority over all things.
He still saves.
He still heals.
He still delivers.
And that's why whatever it is that you're experiencing right now, it's not the whole story.
It's not the whole story.
You see it?
The miracle was never about getting out of the prison.
It was never about their comfort.
It was never about their convenience.
Imagine if Paul and Silas went into that prison and just interpreted that as,
well, God's done with us.
He's going to feed us to the lions.
God has done with us.
Imagine if they allowed that prison to change what they believed about God.
But what you believe about God is the most important thing about you.
And I know plenty of people who have allowed their circumstances to shape what they thought about God when life got tough.
And this story is about two guys bringing the kingdom of God into the prison
so that everyone inside had the opportunity to be set free.
And God displays his power because he loves people.
He interrupts the darkness because he loves people.
He breaks chains because he loves people.
He loves people.
And every miracle ultimately points to the greatest miracle of all,
the salvation that we find only in Jesus Christ.
Amen?
Because every one of us was born into a prison that we could never escape on our own.
Bound, separated from God, unable to help or save ourselves.
But Jesus stepped into that prison.
He took on flesh.
He emptied himself.
And he took our punishment upon himself at the cross.
And he defeated sin and he defeated death through his resurrection.
And now he's offering that freedom to everyone who believes in him.
Maybe today your miracle isn't physical.
Maybe it's emotional.
Maybe it's relational.
Maybe it's a financial breakthrough.
I would love to have the privilege of praying with you today, whatever that is in your life.
Maybe the greatest miracle waiting for you today is that Jesus is forgiving your sin.
That he's giving you a new heart.
That he's making you a new creation.
But whatever prison you walked in, carrying, don't leave believing that it's permanent.
You see, the cross wasn't the end of the story.
The prison wasn't the end of the story.
Because Jesus got the final word.
Amen?
So dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you set captives free.
We thank you that you do things that we don't understand and that they bring you glory.
And we thank you that we can participate in those things.
And we thank you that we can be still and we can know that you're God.
And we thank you that we can worship you both as the God of the mountain and the God of the valley.
And Lord, I pray for each and every person here that is facing difficulty, that they're in the valley.
Lord, that you can bring help.
That you can set them free.
But more importantly, I pray that you can minister and comfort them in their time of challenge and struggle.
That like we sang today, that they will praise you anywhere.
From the prison to the mountain.
And Lord, we thank you that what we experience today is not the whole story.
And we thank you for Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
And all God's people said, Amen.
Amen.
