The Strange Gifts of God: The Gift of Perseverance | Part 4

Welcome to the Awakening Church Podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, they they don't always tell you this growing up in the church or in youth group if you grew up in the church.

And if you're new to church, maybe you have not heard this, but one day you will find yourself tired of being a Christian.

You'll find yourself weary.

You'll find yourself exhausted from the faith thing.

And while you may not doubt God or doubt God's existence, although you might in that state of weariness, you may find yourself one day making yourself breakfast or pulling into the driveway at church or picking your child up from school or walking your dog and suddenly thinking, I don't know if I have what it takes to go on.

I'm tired, I'm weary.

One thing we don't tell a lot of Christians is that weariness is a common feature of the Christian life.

But weariness is a common feature of human life.

You get tired of everything you've ever done.

It's not, shouldn't be shocking, that Christian faith is something that also includes weariness.

You get tired of your phone, of your car, of your own children.

At some level, we get tired of everything.

But we don't often think about weariness as attached to faith because we think something's wrong with us if we're just tired.

And if we're just slow to be joyful about this faith that we have.

If we show up to worship and we don't have the energy that we once used to have, if we don't have that experience that we used to have when we were younger or when we first became a Christian, but weariness is a common feature of the Christian faith.

And 2020 has given you plenty of reasons to be weary.

2020, early 2021, this pandemic changed our Sunday experience that probably led many of you to just grow tired, uh, to not gather together, to not have live worship and live teaching and stuff.

That was a different experience, right?

Not to mention the various racial injustices that we were awakened to once again, and even our country and the church's role in that, that kind of complicated things for so many people.

An election that divided people, and often the divisions were held with really harsh uh religious undertones to it, that probably caused a lot of people to just be like, man, it's hard being a Christian.

Take on top of that, right?

With the pandemic, we were all stuck on our phones at home, experiencing the world through various screens, having this constant flow of information with like a tinge of cynicism on top of it, right?

All the information we get just has a little bit of cynicism to make us want to uh, you know, read more of it.

Um, it's been a hard time to be a Christian, a hard year to be a Christian.

How can we develop an ability to keep going when we're weary?

How can we develop the ability to persevere?

You know, what is our response to weariness?

The past three weeks, uh, we've been looking at this series, The Strange Gifts of God, the final eight chapters of the book of Acts.

And I've been telling you that the book ends strangely.

It does not end like the gospel narratives with a triumphant resurrected uh, you know, power and the ascension of Jesus.

It ends with various struggles and trials of this one apostle.

The rest of the apostles fade into the background, the spotlight is on Paul, and he goes through trial after trial after trial, misstep after misstep, literal trials and justices he's brought before various courts and mistreated by those courts, and he's trying to appeal to clear his name because he's trying to, he's very convinced he didn't do anything wrong, and he's on his way to Rome to the highest appealed authority he can get to Caesar.

And on his way there, he just keeps hitting these roadblocks left and right.

I actually want to summarize it for you, just to remind you.

Uh, there's a gonna be something on the screen.

Look at all that Paul went through and his weariness.

He was beaten by a crowd in Acts 21.

He was arrested in Acts 22, various religious groups tried to kill him and plotted to kill him in Acts 23.

He faced six different mistrials in various courts.

All of them at best threw him out, but at worst treated him awfully, beaten, abused, held against his will.

All of this while he's a legal Roman citizen, by the way, and was mistreated by these various Roman courts.

And then finally, last week, yes, he gets on a ship to finally go to Rome and he almost dies in a shipwreck.

Do you think Paul is tired of being a Christian?

You know, it might set your weariness in context too.

The Bible's good at that, you know.

Um, but yeah, he is coming to Acts 28, weary.

Finally, in this chapter, he gets to Rome.

And you think you're gonna have this moment, right?

This moment of the accusers coming, and you kind of have this to kill a mocking bird mixed with a few good men, final court scene where the verdict is finally out, and we end the book.

Paul's cleared on his name, and the mission of God goes on.

That is not, spoiler alert, what happens.

That is not at all what happens.

He finally shows up to Rome.

In Roman court, you had to have your accusers show up in order to have a trial, or a letter sent, uh, official letter sent in order to uh accuse various uh you know people of crimes.

No letter is sent, no accusers ever show up.

The audience for his defense, which he ends up giving his defense anyways, are mainly Jewish leaders and not Roman leaders, so he's not really able to clear his name as a Roman citizen, but maybe to clear his name as a Jewish Christian convert.

And then the ministry, the work of his ministry becomes radically simplified as he shows up to Rome and he's still under house arrest.

Meaning he has to stay at home with a Roman soldier outside his house and he has to pay for that rental.

Uh, he's not just sitting in a jail cell quite yet.

And that is how the book ends.

Look at the very, very final line of the book of Acts.

If you're in 28, go to the very end of the book, chapter 28, verse 30 and 31.

He, Paul, lived there two whole years at his own expense, and he welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

And with that, the book ends.

There's no massive revival.

There's no big courtroom scene with a verdict, like I said.

There's no answers.

Is Paul innocent or guilty by Roman law?

We don't actually know for sure what happened to Paul after this.

We know some things.

We know he ended up in an actual Roman prison and as much as we can tell, died in that Roman prison.

But we don't know much else.

So, what is this story about?

If it ends this way, with no real answers about the life of Paul and no real answers about the future of the church, what is this book about, right?

Is is this a book about the apostles?

It's called Acts of the Apostles.

But, you know, as as you conclude the book of Acts, a lot of the apostles either die, like Stephen and James, or they fade into the background like Peter and Philip.

You know?

So this book doesn't really, isn't really about all of the apostles.

Well, maybe it's about Paul, because Paul, he's like introduced a little early, then he's really focused on here at the end.

But again, you and you you if this was a biography of Paul, something else should have happened.

There should have been a little bit more completeness to this.

Okay, let's get a little bit more esoteric then.

What is this book about?

Is it about community?

Well, sure, yes, it's about community at certain times, but there's also so much division in this book, and the community is so early in being formed, it can't just be about that.

Okay, is this about love?

Is the book of Acts all about the love of the community, uh, of the church within its local community?

Well, probably not.

You you may not know this.

The word love doesn't show up in the book of Acts one time.

And that's because the scholar Richard Hayes, he says that's because the book of Acts is not so much about love, it's about power.

It's about the power of the kingdom of God.

Yeah, we're we're scratching at something very close.

Look at what Willie James Jennings says.

He says Luke's narrative was not about Paul.

We make a terrible mistake if we think this singular, if this is singularly Paul's story.

Even at its close, with Paul at the center stage, this is not first his story, but the story of another.

It is the story of an urgently longing God who has bound the divine life to the frailty of flesh.

God came to Rome, Paul came to Rome.

These are two completely different sentences joined together simply by the Holy Spirit.

Acts, the book of Acts, is about God's power accomplishing God's plan.

And here at the end, when we don't get a lot of answers about what is happening, we do get an answer for this: a key, a strange gift from God being given to us at the end of this book, which is this.

By knowing that this book is about God's power, accomplishing God's plan, we will grow in this ability to persevere.

Because Paul is in a state that you're in right now.

The book ends in a state that you and I are in right now.

That's why I love this book.

This book does not end like a novel, it ends like real life.

A lot of loose ends, a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of bizarre unknowns.

And yet, here we are invited to understand that this is not a story about an apostle, this is not a story about an esoteric theme, this is the story about God and God's plan and God's power enacting what he would will to do through the means in which he desires to accomplish his ends perfectly.

That's what this book is about.

And it's about us learning to trust God's power and trust God's plans so we might grow in the ability to persevere when things go wrong, when we are weary.

Let me give you perseverance defined in a couple of sentences.

Okay, you can pick one, you could take all three.

Perseverance is to me, it's just about putting one foot in front of the other in Jesus Christ.

It's like following Jesus, one foot in front of the other.

Keep going.

I think it's also defined as doing that which you said you would do consistently over a long period of time.

To persevere in something is to consistently do that which you originally said you would do over a long period of time.

Another way to put it would be this: I heard this definition once.

Continuing in a commitment to something long after the mood in which the commitment was made has passed, right?

You had a mood on your wedding day.

What does it mean to persevere in your marriage?

It means to commit to that person long after the wedding day mood has passed.

And to continue to commit to those things.

Perseverance, these definitions.

How do we develop this?

How do we not just reject weariness, but walk in weariness in perseverance?

We can still be tired.

We can still say we're tired, we can still say we're wearied, but how do we keep going?

God's power and God's plan.

God's power and God's plan.

When you know God's plan and his power, you will grow in your perseverance.

Let's look at the story.

The first thing we're gonna look at in this story as the close of Acts is that value to value God's global and eternal plan over the world's trends.

When I talk about God's plan and that that being a key to you persevering, I'm talking about the ability to see his global and eternal plan.

Acts 28, verse 14.

Acts 28:14

This shows Paul first showing up.

I summarize the story, it's for you.

Let's get into the weeds.

There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days.

This is Luke talking.

Luke, the narrator, is in the company with Paul.

And so we came to Rome.

And the brothers there, when they heard about us, they came as far as the Forum of Appius and three taverns to meet us.

You guys know where that is.

On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.

The Forum was 40 miles away.

The three taverns was 52 miles away.

People came from all over to greet Paul.

Paul, three years earlier, had sent a little letter called Romans, which happened to be a theological masterpiece, to this church.

He had definitely grown in leadership and fame, and people came from 40, 50 miles away, which by the way, no cars back then, remember?

Okay, so long journeys to meet Paul, and look at what it says.

It says, Paul thanked God and he took courage.

This is a common thing that would happen to Paul.

He would show up in a city and gather the faithful brothers around him.

Step one, step zero, even in understanding perseverance is understanding who is my church.

And I put the word global in there because it has often encouraged me to know that we, like Paul in the city of Rome, have a global church in the Silicon Valley, do we not?

And we are often encouraged by the people who move from crazy places like myself, Portland, Oregon, to crazier places like India and Africa and China.

All over the globe, people come to the Silicon Valley.

And the question you have to ask as you are thinking about God's plan for your life and persevering in faith is looking at his global project.

God is doing something with people that are very different from you.

And he's up to other things that you can't see.

And it's only in the church where we gather together and you start to see, oh, God's working in your life too.

In my own community group, people of various walks of life from various countries, cultural backgrounds come together.

We talk about Jesus.

My faith is encouraged, not because of anything I've done, but because the work God is doing in someone else's life.

And Paul, when he gathered these people together, you could see he thanked God and he took courage immediately upon gathering those people.

Paul was weary.

The brothers and sisters came to show faith.

Do what it takes to find the brothers and sisters of the faith.

You need a church in your life to persevere.

Simply put, without the global family of God, knowing that he's working throughout the entire planet and right here, that will help you persevere.

But you also need an eternal perspective.

Not only that God's working in other spaces than you, but God's working outside of even your little lifespan, which is so encouraging.

To know that God doesn't exist just for the years you exist.

But God has existed, is existing, will exist for all eternity.

Paul had this because once he gathered the people, he starts to open the scriptures with them.

And he opens Isaiah 6 with this group as he's kind of defending himself and explaining the faith.

And he has this interesting line.

Look at Acts 28, a little bit further in verse 25.

It says the Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers, he's talking to Jewish people, he's quoting Isaiah 6, this prophecy.

You will see but never perceive, for this people's heart has grown dull.

Therefore, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, they will listen.

Paul is unpacking a plan we have talked about through the book of Acts, which is this this is not just a Jewish movement.

This is a global, eternal movement of God's involvement in humanity.

And there will be people who do not respond to the gospel immediately.

He says, There's gonna be people whose hearts are dull.

But he points the Jewish people to the Gentiles, the quote-unquote outsiders, to say, hey, God's also working in them through his own time and in his own way.

He has an eternal plan.

He pulls back to the Old Testament to pull them to the current moment, to say this: the eternal plan of God is not contingent upon cultural trends.

The eternal plan of God is not contingent upon cultural trends.

In the book of Acts, the trends are constantly changing.

In fact, look at the trends in Acts 28, verse 23.

Acts 28:23

When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in great numbers.

A huge crowd comes to Paul.

From morning till evening, he expounded to them.

In other words, taught from the scriptures, testifying to the kingdom of God, and look at this, trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets, a catch-all way of saying the Old Testament.

And look at this.

Some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved.

If you've been reading the book of Acts, this is quite common.

The response, the responses to the gospel vary from riot to revival to indifference.

All across the board, people are presented with the gospel message, and there's rioting, there's revivals, massive amounts of people coming to Jesus, and there's people who shrug their shoulders and go, I don't really know.

I can kind of take it or leave it.

We as Christians have to understand that according to someone somewhere, the church is always in crisis.

But according to Jesus, the church is where it needs to be.

But you can read God's word to see Jesus saying, the church, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, Matthew 16, 18.

The gates of hell, meaning for all eternity, there will be nothing that can stop the movement of the kingdom of God.

Nothing.

No cultural trend.

Pay little attention to the trends and the people that try to get you to think that the trends are the demise of the church.

You know what trends are, right?

Statistics, data, and various cultural obsessions.

The New Testament repeatedly warns against being, quote, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, Ephesians 4.14, or, quote, led away by diverse and strange teachings, Hebrews 13.

You will, lo and behold, through your Christian life, as you're growing weary, be scrolling on your phone and see a statistic that says blank percentage of Christians voted for blank.

And you will start to think that the world is going to end.

You're like, Christians voted for that person?

Christians voted for that issue?

Christians voted for I would never vote that way, so how can this be how can this work?

How can this reconcile?

There will be statistics about people who self-profess as Christians and they're not self-professing anymore, and the mainline churches are growing and the evangelical churches are shrinking or the Catholics are shrinking or whatever.

You'll read all the statistics, but you should be suspicious of trends and confident in the eternal plan of God.

What does God's word say next to your phone?

Suspicious of trends, why?

First, because sociological data and cultural observations, they fail to capture theological power.

Like, statistics are never, or very rarely, the ones that we receive in the Western world.

They're never set inside the context of the global Christian movement.

So you'll hear things about American Christians and Western Christians and European Christians, but you'll rarely hear about African Christians and Chinese Christians and South American Christians.

And because those statistics fail to capture the global work of God, it's actually really not an accurate representation of what God is doing in this world.

It's just cause to give us to freak out.

Secondly, in statistics, the poor are almost always left out.

I worked in the Tenderloin for two years here in San Francisco.

We were constantly involved with the lives of poor people, and the church that I served at was filled with homeless people and those in deep poverty.

No one asked those people what they thought about anything.

The poor are left out of statistics and cultural observations.

And that is also precisely where the kingdom of God is usually growing.

Jesus said, Blessed are the poor.

That's where it is.

It's among the poor in spirit.

You know, and a trend by its very nature, it doesn't capture theological power because, like, the moving of the Holy Spirit can change a trend like that.

And the very nature of the word trend is something that comes and goes.

The other reason to be suspicious of trends is that the gospel has offended every culture it has ever gone into.

So when we see certain trends or cultural observations happening or think pieces about Christianity and we freak out, like we forget that the gospel, by its very nature, is being rejected and accepted at all times.

In the West, here, the main reason people reject Christianity is mostly because of its sexual ethic.

That's a really big deal in this country.

The teaching, the historic teaching of the faith around sexuality is not accepted in the West, but it's very accepted in other parts of the world.

Counterintuitive to that, in the West, it's super easy for us to accept grace and forgiveness.

Because we think we're the best.

We think we should always be forgiven and always receive grace.

But you take that message to other parts of the world, and that is not acceptable.

Because grace and forgiveness does not equate with their understanding of justice.

And so you see, the gospel, the reason we have to be careful about following trends is that anywhere the gospel goes eventually will affect.

And some part of the culture somewhere in whatever culture it goes into.

And the Book of Acts teaches that over and over again.

And here at the end it teaches that as well.

And finally, when the trends change, in the end, our mission doesn't change.

So why be obsessed with trends if our mission doesn't change?

Look at the life of Paul.

Paul met all those responses: riots, revivals, indifference.

And his message in the final chapter is the same message he's been teaching.

He's opening Isaiah, some Old Testament passages, and he's teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection.

He's teaching about the coming of the kingdom of God.

Even though the trends changed, how he did it may have changed, but not that he did it.

He continued to open the scriptures, to trust the plan of God, knowing there is an eternal plan of God going on.

And in his weariest moments, he was able to disassociate himself from the trends and make himself familiar with the impassioned plan of God, the eternal and global plan that he was just a small part of.

He was just a small part of.

Remember the plan of God.

I love what John Piper says.

He says, God is doing 10,000 things at least in your life right now.

You might be aware of three of them.

To have faith, to persevere, to trust Jesus Christ is to trust Jesus Christ with the remaining 9,997 things he might be doing.

Your finite understanding of God's infinite plan should be introduced into your perseverance.

It should be a part of your rationale.

To trust God's plan is so much bigger, so much wider than trends that you might be observing from your phone.

Secondly, though, we have to trust God's incredible power.

We have to know God is up to 10,000 things.

We might be aware of three of them.

We also have to, in order to persevere, trust that God's power will accomplish God's plan.

God's power is going to be what accomplishes God's plan.

It's not on us.

And we grow weary because we think it's on us.

We think it's out of our own power, but we've got to trust God's power.

Look at again what Paul says.

Here's the very end of the book once more, Acts 28, 30.

He lived there, Paul, for two whole years at his own expense, and he welcomed all the people that came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Look at this.

With all boldness and without hindrance.

With all boldness and without hindrance are the final words of this book.

All boldness, no hindrance, I trust God's power, the power in him to accomplish what it is, even if I'm in prison or if I'm in a palace.

I will trust that God is powerful enough to work through me in house arrest or if I'm free to go.

That was Paul's mentality without boldness, with all hindrance.

How and why can we trust the power of God?

We can trust the power of God because God's power works in all circumstances.

Again, Paul was preaching the kingdom, testifying about the Lord Jesus.

You can pick any chapter in the book of Acts.

He's doing the same thing in a different circumstance.

When he has no chains, when he has chains.

When he's shipwrecked, when he's not shipwrecked.

When he's tired, when he's energized.

When he's in a community that he's comfortable with and a community that hates him.

He's doing the same thing because he knows God is so powerful, he can work in all circumstances.

He did these things and preached and testified in this way.

Even if he couldn't work at the top of his abilities, he knew God would work anywhere at any time.

There is nowhere, listen to me, there is nowhere you cannot obey God.

You can obey God anywhere.

Right?

We have to get into these times in our life where it's like, once I get married, or once I have a family, or once I get this job, or once I have this income, then God will use me.

But God is using you.

Do you not think that God is powerful enough to use you where you are if he was using Paul where he was?

A lot of us see the end of the book of Acts and we see maybe where where is God?

Where is what is he up to?

But it's never really promised that our circumstances will be ideal.

I love actually Eugene Peterson, he said this about being a pastor.

He said, There are no ideal conditions in which to work out this vocation as a pastor.

There are no ideal conditions.

I think that kind of goes to the Christian life.

So far as we are on this earth, fractured, broken, weary, tired, the conditions will never be ideal.

So what's stopping you from trusting God's beautiful power?

We trust it because it works in all circumstances, it also works in all seasons.

You notice, if you were reading carefully, how long did Luke at least know that Paul was in house arrest?

Look at verse 30.

Two whole years.

I like that it put hole in there.

It wasn't 20 months, it was like 24 months for sure.

He could have been there longer.

For two whole years.

And then what?

After this, what happened?

Again, for Luke, this is not the primary concern.

Because this is not a story about the plan and power of Paul.

It's a story about the plan and power of God.

Knowing we've read 28 chapters of God powerfully working over the decades as the church began.

Why would God stop now?

God will keep going and will enact his future plan.

And that's why there's no bow at the end of this story, no happily ever after, there's no closure.

There's no closing off on this chapter.

I hear this a lot from my generation.

I just need closure.

I need closure in this relationship, or I need closure in this job, or I need I need the chapter to kind of end.

I need some conversation.

But friends, closure is never promised.

Closure is never promised.

Perseverance is always available to you.

You may not be able to wrap everything up from your childhood or know everything exactly what went wrong from that relationship, or even know why that season happened.

But perseverance says God is so powerful that he will work in the next season.

And he has worked in the past season, I just may not understand it right now.

But God's power is enough for all circumstances.

I once was given this metaphor, I did not make this up, but it's kind of good.

It's like our life or our cars are designed well.

The rear view mirror is small, the dashboard is huge.

If the rear view mirror was so large, you would crash instantly, right?

If you were looking behind so often.

Well, such as the walk with Jesus.

That to just keep a proper perspective on the past, a limited perspective on the past, is very appropriate to see what's behind there, what went wrong, but don't count on it to take you where it needs, you need to go.

To be constantly looking back is to never see what is forward.

And to know what God is going to do next in your life, you have to have the balance of a larger dashboard and a smaller rearview mirror.

You know, before I came to Awakening about three and a half years ago, I really had thought I had found a dream job.

I thought I was in an ideal circumstance, I thought I was in an ideal season, and then the circumstances and the season changed.

I was working in the, I mentioned the tenderloin, I was in the inner city of San Francisco, diverse church.

I was able to teach to a lot of young people that came in for this internship, and we'd release them to work with the poor, pastoring this little church with a great team.

It was really, really ideal.

But like 18 months in, um the leadership changed and things changed at that church and that organization.

And changed in such a way that I couldn't really with integrity like stick around.

And I was, you know, talking with them and being very open, and you know, eventually I kind of came to this point that like the direction that things are going and the way things are operating here, I don't think I can stay.

And I had all the right conversations, but still when I resigned and left, I I didn't have a job, I didn't know what was ahead for me or what was next.

I knew it was the right thing to do, but it lacked a lot of closure.

It lacked a lot of closure, particularly with just a few people there.

A lot of people I'm still friends with to this day, but I left and it was a really hard way to leave.

Um for the next like four months, you know, Ali and I didn't really have a church.

I didn't have a job.

Um, I didn't have prospects right away or whatever.

There was also kind of larger stuff going on.

This was like 2017, 2018.

There's just stuff going on culturally that made it kind of discouraging to be a pastor during that time.

And I had a lot of thoughts for those four months while I was unemployed, which is like, you know, what am I gonna do?

Do I wanna still be in ministry after that tough season where I kind of thought I had the ideal circumstance and season?

Like, do I still want to do what I was doing?

Do I still want to be a pastor?

Do I still want to teach?

And um I remember being in this, this is funny, I remember like getting off a plane and being in an Uber and the guy being like, So what do you do for a living?

And I was like, I don't know.

You know, I was like, I was just, I, and you know, maybe you're like this.

I I had tied a lot of my identity to being a pastor.

I had attended to my pastoral work as like who I was.

And we often do that in our culture, right?

Like who what we do is who we are.

And when he asked that, it was just like kind of this window into like, wow, I'm I'm I don't know, and I don't know what I'm gonna do.

But you know, one foot in front of the other in Jesus.

God has a plan.

God is powerful.

Maybe I'll be a pastor, maybe I won't.

But God has something He's doing.

9,997 other things that are going on in this world.

I might be aware of a few of them.

And um, it was actually around that time that through Westgate and talking with them, I got introduced to Ryan, and Ryan and I got talking, and our hearts were so similar, and the needs at awakening were perfect, and here I am.

And that season changed and things happened.

But here's the reality: listen, that that's a nice ending to that story.

But here we are, after 2020, looking ahead.

What is certain?

What do we know about what's ahead?

We are in Acts 28, 30, and 31.

We are gathering people, teaching them about Jesus, but we don't know what's ahead.

We don't have a bow wrapped on anything.

At the end of the day, we are here as the community of Jesus, trusting the power of God to enact his work.

And I think for how hard 2020 was, I think 2017 helped me persevere through 2020, the time before.

And that's how perseverance works.

You'll learn to trust God's power and his plan more and more over time as you're aware of the many things he is doing that you are just not aware of at this time.

And God's powerful presence will carry you through, and that's the final thing.

You've got to trust God's power.

Why?

Because it's gonna be God's power that enables you to persevere.

I love this book from the or this verse from the little book of Jude in your New Testament, saying that God is him who is able to keep you from stumbling.

God's power is actually the thing that helps you persevere, and we know this because of what Paul was doing.

Here are just some of the verbs from the final chapter of the book of Acts.

Paul expounded to them.

He was testifying, trying to convince, proclaiming, teaching, and then with all boldness and without hindrance, the end.

Paul was so sure of the power and plan of God that he proclaimed it.

He testified to it even when he was weary, even when he was unsure.

Do you know what you do when you worship, when you come to church, when you sing, when you take communion, what do you do?

You are trusting in the power of God to enable you to persevere.

You don't come here to get a pep talk and become excited about Jesus for a couple days.

You come here to be desperate before him and rely on his power, to eat of his body and drink of his blood that was shed for you, so that you know this incredible fact about perseverance.

You are being carried along by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The same God, enacting those 10,000 things, is attuned to your very life.

And we know this because of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus here at communion.

And here we are reckoned with is this what we are sure of?

And this is what I want you to take away from this.

In our age today, it's fashionable to be ever evolving, to change your mind about things, to interpret and reinterpret everything about everything.

Might I suggest that that is not a good ingredient to perseverance?

You can reinterpret and interpret a lot of things, but for perseverance, I want to ask you this question as we come to the table.

What are you sure of?

What are you sure of this morning?

Because this broken body and shed blood invites us to be sure of this fact.

For all the reasons we can mistrust God and grow weary, we can eliminate the one reason that we're suspicious that he might not love us or care for us.

Here at the table is God's profound announcement that he will not leave us, he will not forsake us, and his power will take even death on and bring it back to life.

And because of that, you can be unsure of literally everything in your life.

But come to church, come to the table and remind yourself, I am sure of God's power in my life, enacting his plan in my life, and I can put one foot in front of the other for Jesus.

Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, we come to the table, and maybe some of us are weary today, and I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would encourage them by the power of you, Jesus.

And the power of the resurrection, which was at work in the raising up of your son, and is at work in our very lives.

God, I pray for us as a church that we would be a church that perseveres, that puts one foot in front of the other in you, Jesus Christ.

And I pray that ultimately during worship and during communion, as we come forward, that God, we would receive the power to walk in you confidently.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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