It Will Happen

It Will Happen

If you have your Bibles,

turn to Acts Chapter 27.

This is the second week in our series called Don’t Stop.

based on the scripture…

Heb 10:36-37

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

If you were here last week,

we talked about how,

even when you can’t see God working around you,

He's always working within you.

And because of that you need to persevere,

until you finally receive the promise of God.

Even if you’ve been waiting a long time,

even if you don’t see any progress right now,

God has a plan for how to fulfill his promise,

and it might be right around the corner,

but you'll never know if you stop.

You’ve come too far in your marriage

to walk away from it now

just because it got tough in those teenage years.

You’ve come too far in your walk with God

to go back to your old life now.

How many of you could tell a story

about about a time when,

you almost stopped short,

you almost quit something important,

you almost gave up,

but you didn’t,

and now you're so glad you didn’t.

And now you can look back and say,

I was faithful,

and then God showed himself

more faithful than I could ever be.

Once you’ve been a Christian a while,

you don’t get as impressed by people

who have the faith to start something,

people are starting things all the time…

but you become very impressed by those

who have the fortitude to finish it.

I admire people, who don’t just have the faith to start,

anybody can show up at the start,

but those who pay the price in perseverance,

that’s who we want to be,

and that’s who God wants us to be.

Acts 27 has a story about the Apostle Paul,

who wrote about 1/3 of the NT.

And we often read his writings,

Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians, Timothy Titus Thessalonians Philemon

We read all his books,

but we don’t always understand

what was behind this man,

and what he suffered

to be able to learn and share all this…

In order to share about

the depths of the riches of Christ,

he first had to experience

some personal depths, and pain, and disappointment.

If you ever see somebody

who has great spiritual strength,

you can bet that

it was born out of some sorrow.

Well, in Acts 27, Paul is in trouble.

He's in transition, and he's in trouble.

And by the way, if you're in either of those stages today,

transition or trouble,

then I want to let you know,

that’s a good place to be,

because that's the place where

God does his deepest transformation.

When we're in transition or when we're in trouble,

and Paul is in both.

He's onboard a ship, headed to Rome,

and it would be one thing

if he was headed to Rome on Carnival Cruise line,

because he wanted to see the sights

and enjoy the climate,

but he's not going to Rome on a luxury cruise,

he's going on the ship

as a prisoner, in chains.

And then to make things worse,

along the way he runs into an unexpected difficulty

that wasn’t his fault.

Lets pick up the story in verse 9

Acts 27:9-26

9 Much time had been lost, and sailing had already become dangerous because by now it was after the Day of Atonement. So Paul warned them, 10 "Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also." 11 But the centurion, instead of listening to what Paul said, followed the advice of the pilot and of the owner of the ship.

If you think about it,

that is a no-brainer,

of course they did that.

If you were the centurion,

in charge of getting prisoners safely to Rome

to stand trial,

and you've got the pilot and the owner of the ship saying,

we can keep going,

it'll be fine.

but then there's a preacher on board,

and he tells you,

Just wanted to let you know, Centurion,

I've been talking to God, and he told me…

Have you noticed that

people will tell you some pretty weird stuff,

but they'll start it out with,

the Lord told me?

That’s like the Christian trump card.

I can say whatever I want to say,

and you're not allowed to disagree,

because the Lord told me.

Like the time I was in a meeting with some people,

and we had a difference of opinion,

but I was trying to be nice about it.

but then they told me that,