um today I'll continue our Series in the book of Acts and it's been such a joy really to go through the book of Acts together as a family because it is the story of the first church family in the Bible and we see all that takes place after Jesus's resurrection and Ascension and it follows through the lives of the Disciples of Jesus and we really get to see their faith in action and all the things they learned while they were with Jesus are put to test and and we see all that throughout the book so I think it's really a powerful book and it's been an interesting time preparing for this because um there's so many things in there to pull out of it but we're going to focus a little bit this morning about how the disciples were able to live for Jesus and in some cases die for Jesus and the Holy Spirit really is the reason and in previous weeks we've looked a lot around the the Holy Spirit and his power throughout the early church you know he is our promised leader he's our teacher he's our guide he's our comfort and peace he's our everything when we want to live for Jesus in this ever broken world that we find ourselves in like the disciples we also receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on us and the Holy Spirit seals our faith and takes us on that Faith Journey and with the disciples we receive power to receive the Holy Spirit himself or we receive power to preach the gospel power to withand trials and temptations and opposition Faith to perform Miracles and Faith to gather fellowship and grow so the book of Acts really is a real template of what our journey of Faith should look like and there's plenty for us to for us to learn so the story we're going to look at this morning follows the report um of the spread of the Gospel to a town called Antioch which is modern day South Central turkey including aack here this is where the disciples were first called Christians so let's bear this in mind even as we read the first part of the text so we're going to be in Acts 12: 1-19 but I'm going to start off just with the first there so verses 1 to 4 says it was about that time that King Herod arrested some Who belongs to the church intending to persecute them he had James the brother of John put to death with the sword when he saw that this meant the approval among the Jews he proceeded to seize Peter also this happened during the Festival of un living bread after arresting him he put him in prison handed him over to be guarded by four squads of Four soldiers each Herod intended to bring out to bring him out for public trial after the Passover so we're just going to pause there for a minute and here we see that the spread of the gospel and the affirmation of the disciples as Christians is being met with death and persecution this did not happen because they become before they became Christian it happened after they became Christians so we can be sure that when we choose a life of Faith a life of following Jesus this could be met with the same response have many of us gone for promotions before you know it all seems very appealing doesn't it the pay Rise um even more holiday allowance sometimes a bit more flexibility hybrid working and maybe even a new title but it doesn't take very long into the role that we get extra responsibilities and we realized that suddenly we fighting battles between the upper management and now our jior college and this can soon become very overwhelming without the same degree of praise and recognition our Christian lives are not a rise to pain we have never been promised comfort in fact Jesus was very clear that if we follow him we will face the same trials and challenges that he faced so we can afford to be so optimistic about Christianity that we forget that it is a tough work to R to run and follow and this can be really hard to teach because really it's a bad business plan can you imagine if our church post to read welcome to emuel we can find pain trials and conflict in difficult times ahead apart from those to curious for their own good really and most of us will run away from it I think presence peace and flourish has a better rooming to it we would like to take credit for this but really it is firmly based on what we feel God has called us to as a church family and this is a truth that really sits hand in hand with the fact that Jesus says that the world will hate us as human beings we quickly get comfortable with the things that satisfy us food water clothes homes jobs money cars and so many more and these are all good things and they are gifts from our God and our father in Heaven however they can quickly become sources of security and identity it is the biggest thing that Comfort may lead to the biggest thing that Comfort leads to I think is a sense of entitlement and after that disappointment cuz when God provides us with a car for instance we're grateful and we're happy but very quickly we begin to enjoy driving places that we soon forget how long we have to wait till the bus stop we forget how early we have to wake up to get prepared and sometimes we have we forget that we have to say know to activities with friends just because of how long it will take to get there in back so maybe 2 years down the line we might even start thinking of the next car we want to you know get something a little bit more fancy a little bit more sturdy on the road a car that doesn't break down but then this one does and it has to be scrapped then we moan and we Grumble about how could this happen to us and what an inconvenience it is all the while forgetting that it wasn't our right in the first place but a gift before long we get frustrated and disappointed in God for allowing this to happen to us for not paying too much attention to our comfort in the car for not even want waiting for us to you know save up enough to get the next one and don't get me wrong have a car is such a gift and it is one I rely on mine so um but we can see here how the car as well as many other Comforts that we have cons soon feel like our rights as Christians we feel it's our right to have a good job our right to not be sick our right to be healed to get married to have children buy houses and so on this sense of entitlement when unsatisfied can make the heart safe sick it can make us sick with despair with hopelessness doubt and sadly can lead to very dark places in our walk with Jesus we soon find ourselves in positions where we start giving God ultimatums like if you don't do this and I give up my faith how quickly we forget that it is only by Grace we have been saved not because of our works so that of us can boast the moment we get comfortable in at ease we are more likely to complain and Grumble when those Comforts disappear and this is why we teach in Trials we teach on it so that we can keep our hearts soft and complete submission to God we also teach in Trials because it refines and transforms us John erber writes that if you ask people who don't believe in God why they don't number one reason you will find is suffering but if you ask people who believe in God when they grew most spiritually the number one reason will also be suffering and so it is clear that the enemy will use our greatest growth Catalyst to draw us far away from God let us consider for a moment to see if you've got braen fingers I'm sure you've been in the garden a little bit this this small summer we've had um but if you imagine that you have a seed and you place it on a pillow under your bed and you stroke it every night you take good care of it in 5 months time you come and you might find that that seed is completely died or it might remain intact and nothing is happened to it but if you place it in the soil it is battered and it is broken down and in essence it dies in order for it to grow and produce fruit as part of that process a good God might actually not P the seed straight away in the ground because the conditions might be too harsh for her first they put in a little tray inside in the soil just so that I can grow and have a chance to germinate and then they transfer it into deeper soil in harsher conditions with the assurance that it will build stronger roots to withstand those conditions the same happens in our Christian faith we have to be buried to grow trials and challenges and suffering form those harsh conditions for which our faith is tested and tried it is in those conditions that we rely on the gardener our good father and we develop strong roots and so we can therefore have good and abundant fruits Jesus tells us that he is the vine and his father is the farmer we can rely on Jesus even in the moment when we don't understand the challenges we can face it with him with us as he refines us and prunes us and makes us ready to grow even more fruits and this can be really hard to get our head around especially if we find ourselves even in this moment in the middle of life challenges and trials and suffering in moments where we feel like giving up so we'll continue with the second half of our passage as it shows us some ways in which we can get through so Peter was in prison but the church was earnestly praying to God for him the night before Herod was to bring him to trial Peter was sleeping Between Two Soldiers he was bound with chains and sentes stood guard at the entrance suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light Shone in the cell it struck Peter on the side and woke him up quick get up he said and the chains fell off Pet's wrist then the angel said to him put on your clothes and sandals and Peter they so wrap your cloak around you and follow me the angel told him Peter followed him out of pris him but he had no idea what the angel was doing was really happening he thought he was seeing a vision they passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gates leaving to the city it opened for them by itself and they went through it when they had walked the length of one street suddenly the angel left him then Peter came to himself and said now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his Angel to and rescued me from herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen when this had dawned on him he went to the house of Mary the mother of John also called Mark where the people were where the people had gathered and were praying Peter knocked on the outter entrance and a servant named brother came to the door to answer when she recognized Peter's voice she was so Overjoyed she ran back without opening it Anda Peter is at the door you're out of your mind they told her when she kept insisting that was so they said it must be his Angel but Peter kept knocking and when they opened the door and saw him they were astonished Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and describe how the Lord had brought him out of prison tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this he said said and he left for another place in the morning there was no small commotion about among the soldiers as to what had happened of Peter after Herod had the Thor search made of him and did not find him he crosses them gods and ordered that they be executed so Peter is no stranger to jail actually In this passage this was the third time he had been in jail and his only crime was that he was a Christian and that he preached the gospel so Jesus shows us that our trials and challenges whilst we are on this Earth don't have an expired date or a time frame there isn't a limit on just one or four sadly or gladly depending on your age bracket that doesn't determine how much you get so we can't say oh you're 5y old you're going to get five or you're three so only 3 days of suffering for you trials and challenges primarily come as a result of the broken world that we live in it is a world that is so far from God's design and so Jesus being perfect came to the world to live and die in order to restore us back to the original design when we follow Jesus we see his work in our lives as we leave for his kingdom to come on Earth he tells us to be of good chair because has overcome the world however this overcome will only be made complete when he returns and until that time we will continue to face hard times and challenges so our attitude really must matter how we conduct ourselves and treat our neighbors during the good times and the bad times is really a proof of the Holy Spirit that's living in our lives and the fact that we follow Jesus so there's no no question at all that we need the power of the Holy Spirit in order to live lives as Christians we need the infilling of the Holy Spirit not just once not twice on a everyday regular basis and so if you're here today You' not yet received the Holy Spirit I just want to encourage you to act to some prayer at the end we would love to pray for you because the the road that we walking as Christians has hard times and you're going to need that holy spirit's power in you to keep you strong to keep you steady he is the one that helps us to withand anything that we may face and we will get toss in turn by the storms of life but they will not drown us so we need the Holy Spirit and other things that we that God has given us to help us on this journey are firstly is Angels many of us today do not actively believe in angels and frankly we find easier to believe in the devil and demons than it is to believe in angels but they do exist and the psalmist tells us that God will give his angels charge over us because he cares for us his angels will watch over us and keep us from [Music] falling in the past year a dear friend of mine has been battling with terminal cancer and recently I saw her and she described moments in hospital when she was strongly aware of God's angels watching over her and she felt this sometimes in the strong presence of the nurses the staff um the visitors and all the patients and sometimes in the power of the holy spirit with help and these were hopeful and lifegiving moments for her and she described a particular visit from a old un friend of ours who came in just the perfect dark moment of our day and his presence and visit at that time gave her the rescue that she needed he gave her the courage to keep holding on to Jesus and even now she continues to hold and chooses to focus on Jesus and his continuous rescue no matter the Brokenness of the world around us or the challenges of our lives like the disciples in the book of act and like my friend we can still have encounters with Jesus today and we just only have to look we have to look around us secondly the church community in Antioch it was a community of Believers that were first called Christians not just one person and the purpose of the trial Jam's death and Peter's arrest was not just aimed at them but at the whole church it aim really was to destroy them break their fellowship and to scatter them the Great greatest challenge to us and to the enemy is the guarded church and it constantly seeks to scatter us and to pick us off one by one and really it is a really good strategy if you ask me um because one of the ways to one of the biggest ways to weaken us and to weaken ourselves as Christians is to separate ourselves from our Christian brothers and sisters alone our blind Sports our blind spots are exposed and we're weak and we have no one to lean on we have no one to share the struggles and actually we have no one to share the victories with however together we can face anything and have people to lean on people to pray for us people to share those lives challenges with and people to rejoice and people will share us on and Peter had absolutely no doubt when he came out of prison and realized where he was he had no doubt about where he would find the Believers he knew that we find them gathered together praying so for anyone here today um who's going through a really tough time you can know that you will find sist here that you will find people ready and willing to pray with you people to stand with you and really it's a call for all of us to be mindful of people around us people going through tough times and we must allow ourselves to be those ones to pray also thirdly prayer you may wonder why we need to pray trials and challenges are normal and to be accepted but God says act anything in my name and I will do it prayer is more about collecting to God that presenting him with a to-do list however it Delights in those moments when we come before him and we pour our hearts out and we ask for him to do something and he will do anything he can can do anything because our acting actually shows our confidence in who he is and our understanding that he is a rewarder of those who seek him it is an understanding that we know that God is good that he is Sovereign and this means that things in our lives though we don't completely understand them are all under his power and authority we can trust and believe that he's attentive and present with us always that he will never leave us nor forsake us we can believe that he is fighting for us and that we can hold on to peace we know that God is ultimately drawing the world to himself and he wants everyone to know him and receive his salvation we know that he is Holy and just that he is good and kind and we trust that because he's holy and good then he is working all things together for our good Jackie Hill peris says that if God is Holy then he can't s if God can't s then he can't sin against us and if he can't sin against us then shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy person in the whole world lastly go and tell we have a promise that though weeping may endure for the night and weeping does endure sometimes longer it feels like but we know that God Joy comes com in the morning there will be moments of Joys and victories in our journey of faith and these must be celebrated we can't allow ourselves to dwell so much in the hard times that we forget that there are good things that God is doing in and amongst us because God is deserving of all of our glory and all of our praise and so we must rejoice when we see his work his hand at work in our lives and in the lives of those around us we Rejoice Even in our Gatherings but even more importantly what we must do is go to the world go to those that are lost and we testify of the god that we serve that is able and that is Hope and that he is able to rescue the world around us is lost and they're blind and they have in desperate need of Jesus everywhere we look we see Brokenness anxiety and depression are at an alltime high many have no hope and very few experienced have experienced God and even if they have they don't even know what they they've experienced Paul asks how can people call for help if they don't know who to trust and how can they know who to trust if they have not heard of the one who can be trusted and how can they hear if no one tells them and how is anyone going to tell them unless someone is sent testimony they lift our hearts and gives us hope and it is also this hope that this dying generation needs and so we must go and tell and you might sit here thinking I don't have anything good at the moment to tell anyone about but we all have a story of God's rescue and you don't have to wait for that big breakthrough to go and tell as Christians we have the best rescue story in the world that is that our sin and our Brokenness and our Darkness did not stop Jesus from coming to the world to come and die for us and it is this story that we have that we can go and share with others and our vision Emmanuel really is to see Jesus people to see people meet Jesus for them to encounter God's life transforming presence know his peace and flourish in his purposes and I hope that we all here today experience God's life transforming presence and that we know his peace and that in this we can go and tell the world about him as we flourish in our purposes and in his purposes for our lives we are all called to go the Great Commission has sent us so as a wrap up this morning just a few thoughts uh for us to reflect on when we find ourselves in the middle of challenges and suffering and trials a day like today can feel really hard it can come across like a blow and it can't even seem insensitive and this is not my intention and I don't think it's God's either over the last couple of years I have faced some tricky times and often they've come one after the other at the beginning of this year I saw friends and family struggle with anxiety and job security I had surgery a friend of mine called terminal diagnosis I have a place ready to buy which fell through and some relationships that broke down and that's just the first half of the year so there are Moments Of Heartache and many tears for not just me but many of us here in the room today and I can tell you that none of those things have been resolved so when they first asked me to do this St I was like oh I'm not sure about this and but then I was like okay God you know what maybe this is a good thing because by then something would have changed and I'll be able to say oh I'm look at God's rescue but actually I can tell you that none of those things have resolved and when I started pring this I felt God gently pulling me out of myself and a sense of AP and reminded me that he wanted me to teach him this so that I can see that he still cares but also to remind you also that he still cares for you in the midst of life challenges and trials we can deeply fully we can deeply rely on God's nature because he's so true to himself it is in this truth that I felt challenged to stop looking at myself so like me what are you looking at are you looking at the things that are missing the things that have been taken away from you the things that maybe you think you deserve I can promise you that there are moments in there also of God's Ministry and his rescue if only you would serve for her so where are your angel rescue moments I'm just going to give us a minute um just to think and reflect on this last month where have you seen God working in and around you and if you really struggling ask the Holy Spirit you can [Music] help finally I want consider who needs to hear your rescue story today if you've been an emmanual for to while you know that we have a simple tool that we have for sharing our stories in less than a minute and it doesn't really have to be mon but it does require practice so the simple key is that we start with a particular moments in our lives and we share about how um what lives look like in those times without Christ then we tell about how we receive Jesus's forgiveness and through his death and Resurrection we chose to follow him we explain how meeting with Jesus has changed and transformed our lives and then we ask them if they've ever experienced anything like this so it's a simple to really and we have it available so if it's something that you're not familiar with do act and we can pass you across but I imagine if you talking to a midwe group you to come around against we we like to go through these things because like I said it requires practice I love summer mons as you can see I was ready with my yellow before the rain because everyone is out and the days are longer and even the summer I think it's pretty cool because we have the Euros 24 and yes it might be coming home and we have the Olympics as well which is pretty Epic now if anyone doesn't like the take the I'm giving you a side eye because if you there's always something in the Olympics that you can enjoy there always something the most random things but this means that there'll be loads of people around there'll be plenty of people to meet lots of time to hang out at Gatherings barbecues Street parties football watch parties Olympic screenings and walks in the Peaks these are people that in Desperate in desperate need of rescue and God's peace and we all have a gift we have a special gift our story of God's rescue that we can give to them so I encourage all of you to go and tell we have a special chance this Wednesday when we will be having prayer meeting for you to invite some of your friends and tell the story Romans 5 I think sums all of this up really really well it says therefore since we have been made right in God's sight by faith we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ Our Lord has done for us because of our faith Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand and we can confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory we can Rejoice too when we run into problems and trials for we know that they help us develop endurance and endurance develops strength of character and character strengthens our confident hope of Salvation and this hope this hope that we have will not lead to disappointment for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us his holy spirit to fill our hearts with his love