Ready For Anything! Series

READY FOR ANYTHING!

Acts 5:40-42

INTRODUCTION

Some years ago Matthew, my 1st cousin, came to visit us in Toodyay. You see he had just bought a new to him 4WD and he wanted me to show him the ropes in off-road driving. He came with his mum and dad. We had a fantastic day! – one of those days where it feels just so good to be alive!

Much of the journey from Toodyay to Perth is directly into the setting sun. So when Matthew suggested leaving when he did – we tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him.

Later that night (I think??) I saw a news bulletin of a serious car accident on the Toodyay Rd. It was reported that a vehicle had traversed onto the wrong side of the road and collided with an oncoming vehicle.

We later discovered that the vehicle that went into the oncoming car was Matthew’s. Matthew escaped with no visible injury. But his mum (my mum’s sister) wasn’t so lucky – she received severe internal injuries – from which, after a long haul, she is now fairly well recovered. Matthew’s dad, my uncle Keith, received such a blow to the head that he is now almost a vegetable and needs to be constantly cared for in a home. Everyone in the other car except for a baby was killed.

What a tragic day in the lives of so many people – a day that began without a care.

This sort of event highlights the need to ask this question – are we ready for anything? Are we ready for whatever life may throw at us?

I want to suggest to you that if you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – you are not ready for anything! You’re not ready for what life may dish up.

John could you please read to us Acts 5:40-42

These guys knew how to be ready for anything! And they wanted others to be ready aswell. They had experienced this provision and verse 42 tells of their determination to help others experience it too:

1. ‘Day after day … they never stopped …’

Why didn’t they stop? In the face of such hardship – why didn’t they stop? They wouldn’t stop because they couldn’t contain the good news that in Jesus we can be ready for anything! That in Jesus we can face the Toodyay Rd trip! God is with us in Jesus. God loves us. These people had seen in Jesus the depth of God’s love – and they had to share it.

‘Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.‘ Jesus is the answer – we can have peace in the storm with Jesus!

Oh how little it takes, so often to stop us sharing Christ, and how much it takes to start us! We pray for opportunities – but we can be like Frank in this story:

Frank prayed every morning: ‘Lord, if you want me to tell someone about you today, please give me a sign to show me who it is.’ While on an almost empty bus a big man came right up and sat down next to Frank. He burst into tears and began to weep uncontrollably. He then cried out with a loud voice, ‘I need help. I’m a lost good-for-nothing and I need the Lord. Won’t somebody tell me how to be saved?’ He turned to the Christian and pleaded, ‘Can you show me how to get right with God?’ Frank immediately bowed his head and prayed, ‘Lord, could this be a sign – do you want me to tell this man about you?’

Answer these questions in your heart right now – ‘Do I know for sure what my life will be like tomorrow?’ ‘Do I know what’s going to happen even in the next ten minutes?’ You see if we’re honest with ourselves, all our knowledge cannot control, or even know the future. You need to be ready for anything. The good news is, you can be ready in Jesus. And we need to let others know that.

‘Day after day … they never stopped …’

Where did they proclaim Jesus – look once more at verse 42:

2. ‘… in the temple courts and from house to house …’

Their witnessing was in two spheres - in public and in private. Public, ‘temple courts’. Private, ‘house to house’. C. T. Studd caught the spirit of this when he issued an order to all his missionaries that they were to preach the good news of Jesus so fully in the areas in which they were working that not one person could say that he or she had not heard or did not understand why Jesus came.