The Mustard Seed Soul Band will be performing at Paulsgrove Baptist Church this Saturday.
Tickets are still available at £5 each - either book online at www.mustardseedsongs.org.uk or phone 023 9232 5944 during office hours. (Tickets will be available for purchase on the door, but at the higher price of £6).
Read Acts 16:25-40
The jailer's conversion is as sudden as it is unexpected: and yet the result is the same. His heart, now open to the gospel, leads him immediately to be concerned for Paul and his companions (he washes their wounds) and immediately gets baptised. Not only do all his household follow suit, but they rejoice with him at the good news that is now theirs.
Paul experienced the joy of seeing his jailer become his brother because he was ready to praise God and preach the gospel (singing songs while shackled?! Inmate preaching to a prison governor?!).
Are there places you go, or situations you find yourself in where you don't feel as though the gospel is relevant? Or people that you're hesitant to share the gospel with because you don't know how they'll react?
Consider how you would have reacted, had you been in Paul's situation: beaten unjustly, chained in the most secure cell in the prison – and all of it an illegal violation of your rights as a citizen! Maybe your vision of God is too small? Maybe your expectations of God are too low?
Ask God to fill you with the confidence and boldness to trust Him in every place and with everyone.
Read Acts 16:16-24
The slave girl is at the bottom of the pile. She is enslaved by men who use her for profit, enslaved by an evil spirit who enables her to know things that she shouldn't be able to know. And the spirit in her is not happy – because followers of Jesus have just turned up in their city. Paul takes his time before intervening – it's not safe to mess with people's profit margins. Not then, not now. (Like missionary William Carey, who went to preach the gospel in India and was unable to preach it in the parts of India controlled by Britain at the time because they feared that it might cause trouble and adversely affect the economy).
The bible says that Christ came to bring us freedom – but we would be wise to remember that this world profits from people being enslaved. Liberating people often threatens existing financial interests and results in serious opposition.
From slander to murder, we should not be surprised by the opposition that the liberating truth of the gospel brings.
Geoff Youngs is a Christian. In order to keep the pennies coming in, he writes software in ruby for photo lab kiosks and web sites.
I guess this stuff is © me, so I'm entirely within my rights inviting you to rip off as much or as little of it as you fancy, provided you don't change the meaning of the content or pretend that someone else wrote it.