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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!
Often
we have some of these feelings:
“there’s no use/harder I try, worse things get/don’t witness, no one
listens/just spinning wheels/getting nothing at church/daily stresses and
problems are all vanity/job/ever find happiness?/daily grind”
(life
is just mundane, repetitive, like Chinese water torture!)
I
know this is true for 2 reasons:
I talk to many of you going thru it
I’ve gone thru it!
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 thou deal thus w/ me, kill
me, I pray thee!”
·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 OT/willing to challenge the idolatry of his day/called
fire down from heaven/won a face off w/ prophets of Baal, but in I Kings
19:4 after it was all over, he requested for himself that he might 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 the all the souls
that just got saved 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 w/ 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-v. 5
“pressed in the spirit” (spiritual stress)
Had a sense of failure
(not much success in Athens/called a “babbler” (bird brain)
-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:
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!”
3
Promises for the ‘Winded’:
We have the promise of …
1.God’s presence
v. 10 “I am with
thee”
·In times of
loneliness
Heb. 13:5, Jesus said, I
will never leave thee, nor forsake thee! (gk. Word “never” there 3 x’s…never,
no never, no never!)
Joke—young bible college
kid taking greek/tried to impress a shut-in at his church/told her the
above, what do you think of that? “Well, God may have to tell you greek
fellers 3 x’s but once is enough for me!
Gospel of Matthew, 2
wonderful bookends:
Beginning:
“Emmanuel, God with us”
Ending: Great
commission, where Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always” (don’t fly!)
Your best friend my stab
you in the back, but He’s a friend that sticks closer than a brother!
In loneliness…
·In the
valley
When defeat comes /discouragement/sickness/ financial
reversal/heartaches/family probs…remember that the God of the mtn. is still
God in the valley!
Ill.—little boy went
home after school very sad/told mom about Billy, his best friend, who had
been absent for 3 days/found out today why when he returned to class…his
daddy died, and when he told us, he cried and just laid his head flat on his
desk/mom: “what did you do?”/I didn’t know what to do, so I just laid my
head on my desk and cried, too!
(that’s the kind of
Savior we have! Bible says, “He’s TOUCHED” w/ the feelings of our
infirmities!
Jn. 11:35 says Jesus
wept/why?/Lazarus had died/Jesus even knew he was going to raise him from
the dead, things were going to get better, but Jesus’ heart still broke in
the meanwhile!
He’s there in the valley
w/ you!
In loneliness, in the
valley…
·In death
If we’re honest, we’ll admit we have a fear of death. (normal defense
mechanism)
Ps. 23: “yea, tho’ I
walk thru the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…for thou
art with me!
Joke—preacher asked
church, how many want to go to heaven/all raised their hands except 1 old
man/you sir, don’t you wanna go someday?/sure, if you put it that way…I
thought you were getting up a load to go right now!
But when our time comes,
the Lord comes Himself w/ dying grace and takes away our fear. He doesn’t
send an angel…He comes for us Himself!
It’s too soon to
quit! We have the promise of His
presence!
2.God’s protection
v. 10 “no man shall
set on thee to hurt thee” (the Lord didn’t say no man would set on
thee)
…not that he wouldn’t be
hurt, but that he wouldn’t be harmed!
They might have killed
the apostle Paul, but not until he was able to say, “I have finished my
course.”
They killed the Lord
Jesus, but not before He said, “It is finished!”
God has a purpose for
your life. (Greater than your job!) And if you choose to, you can live it
out, fearlessly…though there will be persecution, trials and hardships…but
until your work here is done, God’s not finished w/ you, the devil can’t
harm you, man can’t hurt you, disease cannot touch you, there are no
accidents w/ God…He and He alone will call you home when the time is right!
Joke (tried out on
wed. nite crowd…played well!—Calvin and Hobbes:
“God put me on earth to accomplish a certain # of things…right now, I’m so
far behind, I will never die!”
So good to know, that
nothing can happen w/out the Lord’s permission.
To live is
Christ, to die is gain…God, take me when you’re thru w/ me…until then, I’m
gonna serve you!
It’s too soon to quit!
Ahead of us He’s
our guide, behind us He’s our guard, under us are His everlasting arms, and
above us, if we’ll look up, He’s ever-present w/ us in a cloud of glory!
ill.—Fredrick Nolan,
serving God in N. Africa in the midst of terrible persecution/Christians
were running for their lives/Nolan was fleeing on foot/exhausted/stopped to
catch his breath/looked to the right, saw a small cave/went in to await his
enemies locating him, inevitably killing him/as he sat he saw a small spider
weaving a web across the mouth of that cave/eventually the web covered the
entire mouth!/he sat fascinated/persecutors arrived, saw the cave, marched
toward it, saw the web—“he couldn’t be in there!”/they left…he escaped!
Later, he said,
“w/ God, a spiderweb is like a wall…w/out God, a wall is like a spiderweb!”
(not saved? You don’t
have that protection in this life, and certainly not in eternity!)
3. God’s potential
v. 10b “I have much
people in this city”
How could God say
that? There were no than a handful of Christians there!
It’s the promise of
God’s potential!
God didn’t see the
perverts of this city for what they were, but for what they were going to
be!
Years later, here’s what
happened:
I Cor. 6:
9 Know
ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not
deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor
thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall
inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but
ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of
the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
Bothered by the world?
(work/stores/tv) See them the way God does, in the future! God says to GBC,
I have much people in this city!
(we should walk thru the
mall saying, I wonder if that’s one of them? What can I do to bring it to
pass?!)
Need a spiritual
2nd wind?
A Spiritual Second
Wind
Acts 18:1-11
Sometimes God’s people need a spiritual
2nd wind…
Examples:
·M________
Numbers 11:15
·J__________
Joshua 7:7
·E__________
I Kings 19:4
·J____
Job 3:3
·J________
·P______
Acts 18, I Cor. 2:3, II Cor.12:15
3 Promises for the
‘Winded’:
We have the
promise of …
1.God’s p______________v. 10
·In times of
l__________________ Heb. 13:5
·In the v__________
Jn. 11:35
·In d________ Ps.
23
2.God’s p__________________v. 10
3. God’s
p________________v. 10b, I
Cor. 6:9-11
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All Sermons and Slideshow Presentations Copyright Jerry
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