Hello Everyone,

Our e-votion is based on Acts 18:1-11 this week. Read with me.

¹ After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. ² There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³ and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. ⁴ Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

⁵ When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. ⁶ But when the Jews opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am clear of my responsibility. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

⁷ Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. ⁸ Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.

⁹ One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. ¹⁰ For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” ¹¹ So Paul stayed for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

I suppose all of us at some time or another get depressed, or want to give up and quit.

In the heat of a moment we’ll say, "I’ll just leave this job, this church, or this family, and they’ll miss me…they’ll wish they had treated me different!"

All of us at some time are other have had some of these feelings:

“there’s no use the harder I try, the worse things get why witness, no one listens/just spinning my wheels/getting nothing at church/daily stresses and problems are all vanity/job/will I ever find happiness?/daily grind”

(life is just mundane, repetitive, like Chinese water torture!)

I know this is true for 2 reasons:

I have talked too many of you going thru it and secondly I’ve gone thru it myself.

Listen Greater Things Are Still To Come!

See You Tomorrow Pastor Phil 1

Hello Everyone,

Sometimes God’s people need a spiritual 2nd wind…

Examples:

• Moses

The Greatest leader, handpicked by God!

Had God’s power on his life, but in Numbers 11:15 he said to God, If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin.”

• Joshua

Greatest General, handpicked by God to lead Israel into the Promised Land…but in Joshua 7:7, he said, “would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side of Jordan” (so this is what we get for serving God, he said, after a great defeat!)

He felt like quitting! He got over it, thankfully!

• Elijah

Greatest prophet of the OT he was willing to challenge the idolatry of his day he called fire down from Heaven he won a faceoff with the prophets of Baal, but in I Kings 19:4 after it was all over, he wanted to die, and said, it is enough now, O Lord, take away my life!

• Job

We talk about his patience and faith, and he was truly a great man…he had a great beginning and a great ending, but in-between, when he lost everything, he wished he had not been born, became suicidal, extremely depressed for a period of time!

Job 3:3 he said, let the day perish in which I was born!

• Jonah

He wanted God to kill him, and was spiritually depressed and not even happy for all the souls that turned to God in Nineveh!

• Paul

In Acts 18 we find Paul in his 2nd missionary journey, arriving from Athens to Corinth experiencing a low time in his life (of depression)

I Cor. 2:3 Paul says of that time in Acts: “I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling” (could be translated: “I was far from strong, nervous, and rather shaky!”

-He was fatigued (53 mile walk)

-He was alone

-He was bi-vocational (v. 3: tentmaker)

-Stressed- “pressed in the spirit” (spiritual stress)

Had a sense of failure (not much success in Athens he was called a “babbler”

-Frustrated, leaving a city of idolatry and heading for the worst in the world for immorality! (Sin city! The Temple: Aphrodite, goddess of sex, and a thousand prostitutes sold their bodies in the temple in the name of religion!)

-unappreciated…he later wrote to the people of Corinth:

2Co 12:15 And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.

At this point on this trip alone, he’s been beaten and jailed at Philippi, persecuted at Thessalonica and Berea, ridiculed in Athens, and now he has to face Corinth!

He was at a low point, a crossroads in his ministry, and he was just about to quit!

But the Lord came to Paul on this day, and showed him that trying times are not the time to quit trying!

v. 11—he didn’t quit, he continued! Why? Because God told him in 9 and 10: “it’s too soon to quit!”

Why? Because Greater Things Are Still To Come!

Pastor Phil