Living Waters of Grace 09.25.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

We all have a tendency at times to ask God question, but why are

you allowing this Lord or what's the purpose in this or how can

anything good come out of this? We, we struggle at times with,

with God's sovereign hand and, and his work in our lives.

We have to understand there's always a bigger picture behind

everything that happens in our lives.

The Bible tells us and we all memorize the verse that all

things work together for good, right?

All things that means the bad things.

There's a famous Carrie Underwood song called Jesus Take

the Wheel, which is told from the perspective of a woman who

miraculously survives a car crash.

But in today's message, Pastor Clark teaches you that trusting

Jesus doesn't require you to give him the wheel temporarily.

Instead, you're supposed to fully surrender your life to

him, even though you don't know where the road will lead.

But fear not, God's Word teaches that He works everything out for

the good of those who serve Him. Now here's Pastor Clark in the

book of Acts Chapter 4 with today's edition of Living Waters

Acts 4 · chapter mention

of Grace. So we are in the book of the

Acts going through this book verse by verse study.

Can we are in chapter 4 and this is verse 23 where the apostles

had this gotten released from the incarceration from the

authorities and the empire there that were trying to control them

and not allow them to share their faith in the streets.

They got delivered from this abuse and persecution.

And now they're going back to report to the rest of the group

that they are in communion with the body of Christ to pray for

boldness. So we'll pick it up here in

verse 23. And being let go, they went to

their own companions and reported all that the chief

priests and elders had said to them.

And so when they heard that, they raised their voice to God

with 1 accord and said, Lord, you are God who made heaven and

earth and the sea and all that is in them.

So right away they're worshipping God for His

sovereign power and His ability to understand that God's always

in control no matter what is happening.

They were going through some difficult times, being

challenged by sharing their faith in the streets, and they

were being told they couldn't do this anymore.

And so instead of complaining about the authorities or asking

God's vengeance upon the government, they went right to

the Lord to praise Him. First of all, that in spite of

everything that's happening in their lives right now, they know

they're in the center of God's will and they know that He's in

charge. Nothing's happening outside of

God's awareness and His wisdom, and we have to keep that in mind

when we go through difficult times in life and challenges

that we don't understand. We have to realize that God is

not abandoned us. He's always there with us and

for us. He cares for us, He loves us,

and he promises He'll never leave us or forsake us.

And in those times of the dark nights of the soul that we all

have, we have to get before the Lord and say, Lord, I believe,

help my unbelief. Help me to stay faithful, not to

to go backwards, but to trust in You even though I don't

understand what is occurring right now.

Jeremiah, the prophet in the Old Testament was told to go preach

the word and he went to people that didn't want to hear what he

was saying. And because of that, they

eventually put him in prison. And he was upset with God

saying, I don't want to do this anymore.

I'm done, I'm resigning. I didn't sign up for this kind

of stuff. And the Lord let him Stew in his

own frustration. And eventually Jeremiah said, I

cannot but help to preach the word because it's like fire in

my bones. And so no matter what he wanted

to do, no matter what he wanted to stop the one or run or

whatever, he just had this constant urge in his heart to

share the truth of who God is with people.

And that's I'm sure the case with all of us.

We have that same Holy Spirit in us.

So they're worshipping God. And it's a good prayer dialogue

here to sort of think about when we go to the Lord to pray, how

do we start? Do we right away ask him about

things or tell him our troubles, or do we worship him for who he

is and how great he is? Because whenever you start a

prayer like this of God being the creator of everything that

exists, you begin to see how big God is as opposed to how small

you might think he is. When you got the big problem in

front of your eyes, you can't overcome and you're letting it

bring you down and and give you a depression and discouragement.

Well, here they're worshipping God together communally with one

heart and one, one mind. And they referred to David's

prayer and, and Psalm 2 as they're beginning to talk about

the the greatness of God. And David recognized the

greatness of God in his life and in his ministry.

And he said in Psalm 2, why did the nation's rage and the people

plot vain things? The kings of the earth took

their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the

Lord and against His Christ. And so since the beginning of

time, the day when the Lord will completely eliminate the

influence of Satan on this planet, on this earth, in this

universe. And what a day that will be.

But this is the testimony of what it's like to be a people of

God living in a world without God.

Look at the nations. Look how they raised.

Look at all the ungodliness that's being legislated and the

mandates that are being put upon different countries that have

nothing to do with the greatness of who God is.

Man wants to take control and he wants to run this world.

And the more we try to run the world without the grace of God

and the Holy Spirit, the more we destroy this world and destroy

one another. The writer continues here for

Truly in verse 27 against your holy servant Jesus, whom you

anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the

people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your

hand and your purpose determined before to be done.

So he's listing here Luke these different characters that were

responsible for putting Christ on the cross along with our sin,

obviously putting him on the cross.

And the big picture is here that God used all these players that

are mentioned here to be part of the fulfillment of his plan to

accomplish the prophetical plan that Christ would be crucified

and that the world would come against him.

And so they were just in communion, basically not even

unaware of it, that they were supporting and fulfilling the

plan of God even with their evilness.

And He said that they did whatever his hand, your hand,

your purpose determined before to be done.

We, we think lots of times in life about certain things that

occur and why they happen the way they do.

And we all have a tendency at times to ask God question, But

why are you allowing this Lord? Or what's the purpose in this or

how can anything good come out of this?

We, we struggle at times with, with God's sovereign hand in, in

his work in our lives. We have to understand there's

always a bigger picture behind everything that happens in our

lives. The Bible tells us and we all

memorize the verse that all things work together for good

right all things That means the bad things, the heartbreaking

things, the challenging things, everything all things work

together for good to those who love God and are called

according to his purpose. Then the next verse says for

those he did for know he did predestined to become conformed

to the image and likeness of his son.

So the challenges of life and the heartache of life at times

is making us a little more like Jesus.

Jesus is the representative to us of how we are to live this

life. We, we need to understand and

experience a little bit of what he had gone through and what he

went through for us so that we can begin to be humbled and

begin to be interested in others more so than we maybe think

about ourselves. And so he says now verse 29, to

begin to petition Lord, look on their threats and grant to your

servants that with all boldness they may speak your word.

So this was what they were praying for.

Lord, look at how they're trying to stop us from preaching your

word. Look how the culture today is

trying to undermine the authority of God and the world

and the church and the Word, how in some parts of the world

people are being persecuted and proclaiming this book, the

Bible, as being the word of God and the truth of God.

Lord, give us this grace. And Lord's aware of all these

threats. He's aware of what we need.

And we need to have boldness, all of us.

And they needed boldness in this time to speak your word.

So all of us at times we get nervous when we have a chance to

share the Lord with people. Holy Spirit's got our chest sort

of going and we know, Hey, I this is the Lord wants me to, to

say something here. And sometimes we don't listen

and we regret that. But there's always obviously

other opportunities. But whenever he begins to work

with us, we can't do this in our own strength to proclaim the the

goodness in the word of God. We need the power of the Holy

Spirit, all of us, to be able to follow through and give the

message in the power of God. And so they're praying for

boldness that they may speak the word.

They were just threatened and told you will not speak this

man's name, Jesus again to anybody.

And they understood the consequences when they were

being told that by those in authority.

But then Peter said, well, we can't but help but the proclaim

what it is that he's done and who he is.

And, and they were obviously not going to listen to the edict of

the governing authorities at the time.

Later on, they say there's times in life where we have to obey

God rather than man right. And we're probably living in

days like that ourselves as a a country.

We have to understand our rights as citizens and our rights as

Christians. But our allegiance is really to

one who created everything. It's not to any governing

authority. We, we obey those who have

authority over us. We pray for them, that kind of

stuff. But whenever that authority

circumvents the will of God, that's when all of us in our own

conscience have to decide what are we going to do?

Are we going to listen to God or are we going to fear man?

And that's something that we are all, I'm sure, thinking about

more in the days that we're living.

And so then they also prayed that your word will have the

power, obviously to change the lives, but by stretching out

your hand to heal, it wasn't them praying.

God give us the power to heal or create miracles, all this stuff.

They always understood the apostles, that any miraculous

power that was manifest was not manifest by anybody's human

ability or the will of man. They were asking God to stretch

out his hand. Jesus is the great healer.

He's Jehovah Rapha, He's the great physician.

He has the power to heal, still heals and he's able to stretch

out his hand to heal. And that signs and wonders may

be done through the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

So in the early church, the amount of miracles that were

occurring on any given day were just unbelievable.

This is a common occurrence, signs and wonders miracles.

And then so as a result of that, it got activity, it got people

interested. Now a lot, not everybody that

came to to experience miracles or to see miracles became

followers of the Lord. Many of them just wanted the

hype and the excitement, but they had no interest in

repenting and living after the ways of God.

But nonetheless, the Lord used this Apostolic authority in the

beginning stages of the church to shape the church.

And so then they continue there here in verse 32.

And, and I'm thinking about like your life and mine, like this

past week. Did you have an opportunity to

share your faith with anybody? Did you have a chance to pray

with someone, to do a random act of kindness for someone in the

name of Jesus? Were you praying specifically

for a situation to come to pass in someone else's life that you

were burdened for that? Did you make a phone call to let

someone know you were thinking of them or caring about them?

These are all acts of power and boldness to come from the heart

of God who dwells in US through us as the people of God that we

might be instruments in his hands to be the hands and feet

of Jesus in this world of, of, of struggle and and challenge.

Cindy called me this week all excited.

She says you wouldn't guess you believe what the Lord did for

me. I, I visited this lady in the

development of an older woman where my mom lives and she's

having to like move out of her house and get rid of all her

belongings and she has to move into one of the skilled nursing

facilities. And she's, you know, you know,

overwhelmed that she has to do this in her life.

And she's looking at all the stuff and the memories and when

her husband was alive and all the beautiful experiences they

had. And her heart was sad that, you

know, she didn't, she knew she couldn't take everything with

her. And so Cindy said, why don't you

look at the things that are most important to give you the most

happy memories and just take those things.

And so they were talking and then the Lord just put on

Cindy's heart to ask the lady if she could pray for her.

And the woman said yes. And Cindy was so blessed that

she was able to be in that place providentially by God and a

situation that she wasn't even planning on doing.

The Lord just put on her heart to stop at this home and, and

then the Lord opened the door for her to minister Jesus to

this woman. And, and, and so the woman was

blessed and she was touched and, and tears and that kind of

stuff. But but Cindy was really blessed

and, and, and I, I was blessed and I have a, a wife, obviously,

who cares about people and, and wants to be used by the Lord,

right? That's, that's awesome, right?

And we all want to be that way. And it's all the work of the

Holy Spirit. He's the one that sets these

opportunities up. So they're they're talking about

this work of God and then it says in verse 31, and when they

had prayed, they were praying together with one heart and one

mind where they were assembled together.

It was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and

they spoke the word of God with boldness.

So I don't know how many people were here at this time, but it

was the apostles and the church beginning stages of the people

in the church. I'm sure a good number of people

assembled there. It wasn't evidence that this,

the apostles were filled, but the whole church was filled with

the Holy Spirit. It wasn't another Pentecost.

There's only one Pentecost. There's only one Calvary.

But it was a replication, if you may, of the influence and the

power of God being able to continually give the church and

the believers the power to do the work of the ministry.

And so, you know, we pray here, God, fill us with your spirit.

Fill us today as we're studying your word, Phyllis, as we

worship Phyllis, so that we go out of this place today

different than when we came and that we all have our antennas up

to want to be used by the Lord in a specific way, right?

To be used by God, to be able to have the Lord put aside our

obsessions and our compulsive natures at times of why I got to

do all this stuff first, you know, and then maybe I'll have

time to do some stuff that the Lord might be interested in.

So that's the opposite, right? The Bible says seek first the

Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Seek first His will, His plan, His purposes, and everything

else you have need of will be added unto you.

And so they were filled, and we'll read throughout the book

of the Acts this tremendous work of God, the Holy Spirit filling

them with His power. I get up sometimes in the

morning and sometimes I don't feel like getting up.

I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to do anything.

That is going to be bummed out some days, right?

And then I say, Lord, come on, I need power, I need strength, I

need your, your love, your ability.

You know, you got to get me in gear here because if you don't,

I'm not going anywhere, right? And the Lord does that.

He's faithful to fill us. He's he's faithful to refresh us

and to renew us. And, and we got to be reminded

of the fact that we need the power of the Holy Spirit.

He's been given to us to give us the strength to live the

Christian life and to do our jobs and to do our marriages and

do our family life and all the things that we, we deal with in

life. Everything has to be done in and

through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And I'm amazed at how often and we have a tendency to try to do

stuff on our own strength. These guys were faced with a

challenge. They knew they needed to pray.

They got the people praying together with them and then they

petitioned God to do what they needed him to do in order for

them to be able to speak the word of God with boldness.

So then we continue in verse 32. This is when they began to share

all things. Now when we study Acts, a lot of

churches nowadays, they talk about wanting to get back to the

early church. Well, there's certain principles

of the early church that are eternal, if you may, the

teaching of the word, meeting in the apostles, doctrine,

fellowship, prayers and the breaking of bread, which is the

Lord's Supper and the Lord adds daily to the church such as

those who are being saved. But this instance of what they

did here in the beginning stages here was not something that we

see carried on in the pastoral epistles.

This is a one time experience. Some ideas that some folks had

that they thought they could share everything and and

breakdown their assets so that everybody would have enough to

be able to to take care of everything that was happening.

The problem was at this time that that there were so many

people in Jerusalem because of Pentecost, that there was a lot

of people who had left their homes and their families

temporarily and their jobs. And so they were there in this

phenomena of this early church, this excitement.

So there was a lot of people that needed shelter, they needed

food, they needed provision. So they figure, let's pour our

assets together so we can take care of all the needs of the

people. Well, eventually this thing

stopped because first of all, they ran out of money.

Everybody needs to work in order to continually fuel the bills,

pay the bills that take care of the needs of the of the church,

that kind of stuff. So this wasn't written down as a

gospel mandate that this is what the church was to do.

If you want to know about giving and and participating in

community. Second Corinthians chapter 8

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

talks about why we give. We don't give out of compulsion.

We give willingly, cheerfully, as God has caused us to purpose

in our hearts or God loves a cheerful giver.

It wasn't like, you know, bring everything that you own to the

Calvary Chapel altar. And we, we, we figure out what

we do with it. You know, we take a portion of

what it is that God blesses us with.

We sow it into his Kingdom. He says, if we sow liberally,

we'll reap liberally. If we so sparingly, we'll reap

sparingly. So we have this desire in our

hearts as the Holy Spirit works in the church to give into the

work of the ministry. But anyway, these guys, what

they decided to do at this time says the multitude of those who

believe we're one heart and one soul.

And that's. Critical in a local ministry.

You want to have the same heart and the same mind.

Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was

his own, but they had all things in common.

So when you think about your assets and what God's entrusted

you with, they're really His. And He entrusts those things to

you to use accordingly, right? Use them for His Kingdom.

You use them for your goals, your pleasure.

He gives us the opportunity to use what it is He's entrusted us

with. But we have to all be good

stewards. We're going to give an account

God and how we use what it is He trusted us with.

But they had this plan to share things in common.

And with great power, the apostles gave witness to the

resurrection of the Lord Jesus. So the preaching was happening,

the Word of God was going out, the people were coming to know

Christ, or at least thinking about coming to Him, and great

grace was upon them all. So in the beginning stages of

the New Testament church, the grace of God was so abundant.

The church was so pure. There was so much love and

humility and simplicity. They didn't have a lot of

complicated things going on back in those days, or there was no

such thing as a praise ban. There was no such thing as

technology and computers and Wi-Fi and Internet.

I mean, we didn't have all that stuff back then.

And yet, believe it or not, God still is able to accomplish his

will, right? But they didn't even have a

building. They were in the streets in

those days. They met in the Solomon's

portico, borrowed the porch together as an assembly.

But basically, ministry was always happening out in the the

streets as the word of God was being proclaimed.

But great grace is upon them all.

And I think one of the important things to remember in the

Christian life and in the local church is that you try to keep

things as simple as you can, right?

That's really important because soon as they become complicated,

then we begin to get in the way of the Spirit of God.

We begin to quench the Spirit of God, We begin to grieve the

Spirit of God. Paul's heart, when he preached,

he said the one thing he was most concerned about as a church

began to develop was that the minds of the people would be

corrupted from the simplicity that's in Christ Jesus.

If our minds get complicated about church and ministry and

knowing the simplicity of the Bible, Jesus loves me.

This I know for or the Bible tells me.

So it doesn't get any better than that, right?

And then walking in that reality of God's love and experiencing

that on a daily basis, that's where it's at, right?

Whenever something begins to become a strain or pressure or

you know, passionless, then you know, Chuck Smith used to say

when something's on life support, in other words, man's

trying to keep it going, pull the plug.

It's already dead right? Don't try to make something

happen that God isn't in. And we all have a tendency at

times to do certain things. And lots of times we we begin to

do ministries in our lives. And it doesn't mean just because

we don't see anything happening right away that God isn't in it.

Sometimes God's testing, our perseverance, our dependence on

him, our patience are waiting upon the Lord.

The Bible says those who wait upon the Lord, right?

Waiting on the Lord is a hard thing to do.

They shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings

like eagles. They shall run and not be weary.

They shall walk and not faint. And you may be waiting on the

Lord for something in your life to come to pass.

Don't get discouraged and don't get downtrodden.

Whenever God gives you a vision and a purpose and a plan, keep

on keeping on, and in time you'll see the fruit come forth

as He blesses what it is. And He's called you to put your

hand too. Don't ever give up.

Thank you for listening to this edition of Living Waters of

Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching us

about the book of Acts in this series.

Acts is a powerful and unique part of Scripture, not just

because it records the spread of the gospel geographically from

Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but also culturally.

Acts shows us how the message of Jesus moved beyond its Jewish

roots and began to reach the Gentile world.

What started with Peter leading a small group in the Upper Room

became a global movement with Paul taking the gospel to

cities, synagogues, and marketplaces across the Roman

Empire. Acts captures this vital

transition and reminds us that the good news of Jesus is for

all people in every place. May we be inspired to carry that

same gospel boldly into our world today.

Living Waters of Grace comes to you from Calvary Chapel,

Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA

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716, Greensburg, PA 15601 also invite you to join us in person

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