DEC 20 2015 | Acts 5:17-21

Sea Change Church · "Acts 5:17-21" · Adam Stadtmiller · December 20, 2015
Acts 5:17-21
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Transcendence is what we're looking for when your soul gets touched. You feel that in here right now? That's transcendence. And I want to disciple a congregation and that's what we're going for. You can't buy it. You can't create it, but you can make a platform for it. And really, I have a value to see our church be a church that seeks this place.

In the corners of our own hearts and in the corner here at this church and in the four corners of the world. I just need a second to just kind of collect my soul here for a second. If I can, can I just pray? I guess that's the only thing I know what to do. Let's just take a second, Lord. God, you are so good. You're not a commodity. Jesus wasn't sent on Black Friday.

You're not a commodity to be traded. You're a beautiful baby, beautiful child that was sent, that was the king of the universe. And you have all the answers. And for those that can't say it as well, for those of us who can stand in the gap for them, we want to say it as well. Just think of someone you know right now who's going through cancer, miscarriage, difficult marriage.

Maybe it's you. And let's just ask that God, would you make it well? Would you show that it is well when we come against resistance, Lord? So we bless you. We thank you for this place. Bring more in 2016. More of this. This is more of more, more. Can we just ask right now for more of this, Lord? Give us more. As a congregation, more of you. More of you. More of this, God. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Hey, good morning. It's really, really, really good to be here. Alex, did you get the pictures up to the, you did. Let me just bring up Alex real quick. We had the funnest event. Alex runs our surf church with a whole bunch of surfers. Hey. Woo-hoo. Yeah. Tell us what happened yesterday. We helped a bunch of orphans. And so that's from Nacho Libre. I hate orphans. I believe in science.

All right. Tell us what happened. Yeah. Yesterday we had a gram-a-thon. So we had about 35 grams of all shapes, sizes, and surfing abilities. Down in PB, we met at the pier and paddled from the pier to the point and back. So about a mile and a half. And we did it as a fundraiser for Aleph, which is an organization in South Africa. They used surfing to help mentor and disciple disadvantaged youth.

So there's a couple of grams. Pretty stoked. It was a, yeah, really good time. It was Jacob. And, yeah, a lot of fun. A lot of stoke in the water. And, yeah, really good crew, a lot of which are here now. Do me a favor. Tell me, you started Surf Church with a group of ragtag surfers. And tell us how the first six, eight weeks of that went. You were meeting here every Thursday, and we were hoping for people to come.

Tell us what happened. Yeah. So we started last year, and for six weeks, we just had one Grom, Matt, who's sitting right there, who came consistently pretty much every week and hung out with us. Creepy old folk. And then, yeah, we had a contest maybe six weeks after we started, like, in PB and, like, passing out flyers one day. And I stopped by the church, and Adam was like, yeah, I pray that you guys have 25 people at this contest.

And we're like, okay, cool, pretty specific. Like, yeah, sounds good. And then came again on Thursday, and, yeah, same prayer. And then, yeah, that Saturday we had a contest. We had exactly 25 kids entered and, you know, more there. And then, yeah, from then, a lot of guys have been kind of coming back and building a really good community here.

Thanks, Alex. Let's thank Alex for all they do and the team. Word. This is just one of the ways we're reaching young people in La Jolla. One is through our middle school ministry, which is awesome. They had a good group of kids show up to do ice skating here last week. I think we had about 15 total of everyone was there, which is cool. It's really cool.

In a church, it was pretty crickets around the youth ministry for a bunch of years here. High school has been doing some neat stuff. They're taking a ton of kids to camp. And then we have surf church as well. We really want to reach young people. We want to reach everybody. I was at Casa de Manana. I had dinner with the Cottons this week, my family, down at the retirement community.

And I thought, I want to reach these Groms too. These guys are awesome. Right? Because, you know, to God, one generation is not as more important than another. And we want to be a multi-generational church, and we're doing it, and God is good. If you have your Bibles, open up to Acts 5, 17 through 21. Let me say that again. You got it recording? Got it.

Start over. If you have your Bibles, turn to Acts 5, 17 through 21. We are reading in the English Standard Version. As some of you will know, I switch versions. I go back and forth just so we can get a full understanding of what different scholars have thought about the Bible. I want to make sure that I worship God of the Bible, not the Bible of God.

And we can sometimes start worshiping a certain translation. I've been guilty of that. There are some that I think are better than others, but I try to get around. And usually when I'm studying for a passage, I'll look at seven to eight different translations. A Greek as well. I just had to say that so I could look cool. And these ancient texts I pull out.

No. And let me read about resistance. Today I'm talking about resistance. The first church in Jerusalem in the book of Acts was meeting upon resistance. Actual physical resistance. Now we know that they had been not only threatened, but what kind of threatened? Anybody remember? Severely threatened. Okay. So there's a big difference between when perhaps your wife threatens you and severely threatens you.

Okay. No one laughs at that. My wife never threatens me, by the way. And we see the difference that they were threatened by the Jews at this time. The Jewish leaders. Well, they were Jews as well. So they were being threatened by the Jewish leaders. And they came up against resistance. But now that resistance had teeth in it. They had met it. And what I want to do is whenever we're looking at the scripture, it's easy to look at a group of people and sometimes miss that there's individuals in the midst of that larger group.

Or sometimes when you're looking in the scripture at one individual, it's easy to miss the point that they were part of a more grand community. Perhaps Israel as a whole. And we see God doing something in one person's life, but we forget that it is tied into what he's doing throughout the community, throughout the ages. And so we have individuals, as you'll see in their notes here, that made up this beautiful body of Christ.

And that's what it was. I mean, this church in Acts is a beautiful body of Christ, just like you. This is a beautiful church. I don't know about you, but I love this church. I love the people in this church. I love the community. It's, you're beautiful. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You're beautiful. I should get a big mirror up here. Just put a mirror on the wall.

It says these individuals made up the beautiful body of Christ, but they were, the individuals were also facing resistance of their own personal and literal demons. And we know in this scripture that it talks through Acts that there was actual demons resisting what they were doing. So there was a resistance against the movement in this church.

This first church was having powerful manifestations. People from all over were coming to know Christ. It was growing. The community was growing. There was power that was backing up the message. The gospel was going out and it was facing resistance. At the same time, individuals were facing their own demons in the midst of that. And I love what Chris said during the worship when she brought it back to the individual heart.

Well, maybe there's someone who's facing resistance right now and we need to stand in the gap and say that it is well for them. Peter, we know, had faced his demons and now was being put at the front of the community to see if he would fold again under resistance. Now this idea of resistance, I want to say, I kind of stole this idea. I'm reading a book right now.

It's fantastic. It's called The War of Art. Now, not The Art of War by, is it Tao Zing or something like that? There's a, who? Sun Tzu. Yeah, Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu. Thank you very much from the back there. I appreciate that, Sean. The War of Art is about becoming your creative self. The War of Art is about becoming the person that you were completely called to be.

And it's all about artistic creativity. It's a fascinating book. And so this, one of the first third of the book is about the idea of what do we do when we come against resistance? And I would ask you that for yourself. What do you do when you come up against resistance? We all have hopes and dreams, right? The things that we want to do. The person that we want to become.

But in the midst of going after that, we always seem to come up against resistance. The question is, what do you do? What is your go-to when you hit resistance? Some people's go-to is pills. Some people's go-to is sexuality. Some people's go-to is becoming a victim. Some people's go-to is name a thousand things. You see, there's always an if. In January, we're going to have a month of if.

There's a scripture in January. And every January, we seek the Lord as a church to see if we can get to that next place God wants to take us to. And in 2 Chronicles, there's a verse that says, If my people will what? Humble themselves and pray. It says, I will hear their voice and I will, let's paraphrase, I will do what to their land? Heal their land.

In the month of January as a community, we're going to challenge you as individuals within the larger body of Christ to accept that if. If I prayed a little bit more. If I was a little bit more benevolent. If I sought God's face. If I was forgiving. Whatever that if is that flies in the face of your resistance. Because when we come against resistance, and you know what the resistance is in your life, there is always an if.

And there is never a moment in your life where you can make a decision to dynamically change the path of your future. There is never a moment where you can take a different way. Where you can put an if, a clause, a conjunction in front of that path. A fork in the road where you can say, but if, I'm going to change my life with the power of if.

What would it look like if you did this? What would it look like if you did that? And being really serious about the things that are resisting us in our life from becoming everything that God wants you to be. Let me read the scripture. Verse, let me see, is it 37 there? No, 21. 17. I can see it. But the high priest rose up. Let's put a circle around that word, but.

It's a conjunction. Conjunctions. Conjunctions are super important in the scripture. Because they show something was one way, and now something else is happening. And one of the ways to look at scripture is to make sure you look at the conjunctions. But is a conjunction. Circle it. But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him. That is the party of the Sadducees.

And filled with jealousy. That's the why. The why behind the what. Why were they being persecuted? Understanding where the resistance was coming from, and the why behind your resistance. So they were filled with jealousy. And they arrested the apostles, and put them in public prison. But during the night. I love that. Circle that but. There's another word.

A conjunction. Talks one thing was happening, but something else happened. But. I love this. During the night. Underline during the night. Let me just assure you that God does his best work during the darkest darkness. That during the night. An angel. Who? An angel of the Lord. Opened the prison doors. An angel of the Lord. I want to say angels are still in the work.

In the business today. Of aiding you. And coming alongside your life. And if we could see into the spirit realm of what was actually happening. Or if we begin to ask God. Send your angels. I don't know how many of you actually do that when you pray. But it's not a bad prayer. Send your angels. I've had four people come up to me and tell me. Two of them have seen physical angels at this church.

Now you might think that's crazy. I don't think it's crazy. Actually I believe in angels. The devil. That. All these things. God. I had two people tell me. Is it two or three? I don't want to mess up on this. It's important. A handful. Tell me that they feel a sense of presence of God's angels here. And I believe it's true. That we ask. And so in this. We see that God sends his messengers.

To fight against the plan that the enemy had for this church in Acts. You know sometimes we give the devil too much credit. Demons. Demons. Demons. For every one demon. How many angels are there? Two. That's correct. That God is always winning. God is infinite anyway. So he doesn't need. He doesn't need numbers to succeed. But we see that during the night.

An angel of the Lord. Opened the prison doors. What are the prison doors that you need to have opened? Are there some prison doors that you feel you're captured behind? Is it fear? Is it worry? Is it fear of rejection? Is it a relationship? Is there a prison that you feel is causing the resistance? Because a prison door is resistance. But an angel of the Lord.

Working under the command of the Lord. Opened the prison doors. And brought them out. They didn't walk out on their own. They were what? Brought out. I love that. Because sometimes we don't have the ability or the power to walk out on our own. But God is sovereign. And God will grab you by the hand. And we see it so often in scripture. Even in the Old Testament.

Where he grabs you by the hand. And he pulls them out into safety. My favorite four-letter prayer is what? Help! How many of you have been praying that since I brought it up to you? I have been praying. Good. D? Good. That's great. So Dee and I are praying that. Help! If you need help out of a prison and the doors are barred. Help! Just pray help. Look at that situation.

You don't have to come up with this elaborate prayer. You don't have to come up with beauty and prayers and articulate to God. God already knows what's in your heart. Matter of fact, you cannot even articulate what is in your heart. The proverb says. You can't even articulate it. One of the best things you can do is just put a list. Say you have a difficult relationship with a friend.

And just say, Lord, my relationship with Tony or Mike or Tina or whatever it was. Help! God, help! Help! Help! Just give us help. Such a great prayer. God, reach in and pull me out. And God, for me, has pulled me out. Has he ever pulled you out of a place that you couldn't get out of on your own? But then all of a sudden you realize you're gone from that place?

God breaks resistance. It's resistance. An angel came and he will help you with your resistance. Verse 20. Go. I love this. Look at these words. Go. Circle that. Go. And stand. Circle that. In the temple. And speak. Circle that. To the people, all the words of this life. Circle the word life. Life. It's a word I've been focusing on lately. I want to live life.

I want to feel life. I want to experience life. I want to live in the hope of life. The joy of life. The smells of life. The beauty of life. I want to, when I get in the water, when I go surfing, I try to feel the water now on my face. It's just amazing that God has allowed me to feel the refreshing, you know, water that comes. Whatever it is. I'm trying to live a life that is based in a message of the gospel.

That God is life. We live in a death creating culture. We live in a machine of death. It is. Go look at the news. Go look at, just look at the culture. The culture is terminally ill. And it moves towards death. The scripture says that the culture is moving towards death. But I want to live life. It says go and speak words of this life. In your tongue is the power of what?

Well, scripture says life and death. And you can choose to create the culture that you will surround yourself with. Even your own soul. As you speak to yourself. One of the things I love that my wife said to me on a regular basis. Was I would say, ah, I'm this, I'm that. She'd say, why do you allow yourself to speak to you that way? What? Say that again.

Why do you allow yourself to speak to you that way? You wouldn't let anybody else speak to you that way. Why do you speak to yourself that way? Speak words of life to yourself. It's not positive thinking. Speak the scripture. Speak the truth. It is the truth of God's word. Speak the truth over your children. Speak the truth over your girlfriend, over your fiance.

Speak the truth of God's word. Bring life. There is power in the tongue of life and death. And he said, go out and speak life. And as a church, we want to speak life. It says, and when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach. What were they teaching? Life. Let me say, what comes out of your mouth? Are you a person that speaks death?

Are you a person that speaks life? This was a church that said, we have life on offer. But yet there was resistance. What is, let's look at resistance. What is resistance and why is it so powerful? Look at your notes. Resistance is an opposing force. Resistance is that thing, that force that stands between the you you want to be and the you that you might become.

It is the unlived life. Let me say this again. Resistance is that thing. It is that force that stands between the you that you want to be. Not only the you you want to be, the you that you are built to be. I'm not going to say called. Called has so much, I don't know, it's just got a lot of packaging. Like what's your calling? What's your purpose?

It's got so much addendums to it. We've overused those words. But what are you built for? What if you just began to live according to what you were built for? Because you're built for it. No one can do it like you can. Seriously, nobody can do what you were built for like you. What if you began to just live and understand who you are as opposed to trying to be someone else?

Resistance is that force that stands between the you that you want to be and the you that you might become. It is the unlived life. This last week at Maryland's, my daughter has these friends that she hangs out with. She's a brand new student over there. It's been a really difficult transition in eighth grade to go from where you've been with kids in preschool all your life and your best friends.

And she was on the TV channel at the school so everyone knew her because she was every morning on the TV channel. And then come here and know nobody. Okay? Completely different culture. Everything. And she was sitting with these kids and she's very personable and makes friends. And she was getting ready to sit with these four or five girls who are artists and they all draw.

My daughter is a pretty talented artist. And so they all draw during lunch. And this kid came up to her and he says, hey, why do you sit there with them? She says, why don't you come sit with us? Don't you want to be cool or popular? Don't you want to be popular? What an awesome man. He just said it. I was like, wow. Okay. So if you sit here, assuming that he was popular, obviously.

You know what my daughter said? She said to him, because I like them. Resistance says, go be cool. Don't sit where you want to sit. Don't sit with the people that bring you life that you enjoy sitting with. Come sit with these really annoying kids that live in a world of cool. I said, Lily, you know what's cool? You were invited to that table, but you decided not to go.

When I was a kid, I was never invited to the table. You know what I mean? Resistance. I have a daughter who's deeply committed to being who she is. Deeply committed to being who she's built to be. And I'm really inspired by it. Resistance is that thing that stops the unlived life. Joshua had his Jordan in front of him. Would he cross that Jordan and live in the promised land?

I want to say it's much harder to live in the promised land than it is in the wilderness. We've said this before. But in the wilderness, are there giants in the wilderness? No. Are there enemies in your wilderness? No. Is God's presence in your wilderness? Yes. The tent of God of meeting was in the wilderness with the people of God. God's presence was there.

Is there food of plenty in the wilderness? Yes. Manna. So you got food. You got God. You got no enemies in a riverside view. Okay. There on the Jordan. Why leave? Resistance. Complacency. That's my biggest struggle. My biggest struggle is complacency. B plus is good enough. That's always been my battle. B plus is good enough. What would it look like to live in the land of your promise?

I would say it's scary to be. You know what? It's scary to be who you are. And I'm scared to death of what it would cost me. Still am. What it would cost me to live in the land of my promise. To become who I'm completely built to be. And as I'm looking at this sermon. As I'm crafting it. I'm beginning to ask myself. Where are the areas of resistance that are keeping me.

That I have accepted because it's comfortable. Not all resistance just happens because someone's oppressing you. Some walls are built by our own volition. We build a wall. We call it resistance. But we write comfort on the front of it. Do you want it all? Do you want everything God has for you? Do you want everything that he has for your marriage?

Do you want everything that he has for your relationship with your kids? Do you want everything he has for your business? Or whatever it is. Do you want it all? Ephesians 3.20 says that God is wanting to impart to you more than you could ever hope. Or dream. Anybody know the last word? Or imagine. That means you can sit there your entire life. And think to yourself.

What do I want that God could bless me with? And you will never be able to come up with it if you sat there for eternity. Because he is a God that has an infinite mind. We are surrounded within the confines of our own understanding. And God says I want to give you more. What would it look like if you broke down the walls of resistance? Moses had his disability.

Moses was a stutterer and he couldn't speak. And God said I want you to lead a million plus people. And I want you to call and lead them. And I want you to go and speak to Pharaoh. But he had a disability. Moses overcame his disability. Peter had his fear. Terrified. Big man. Big words. Bring two swords to Jesus. I'm going to stand up. But when Jesus says I'm not going that way.

I'm going to the cross. Peter runs. A lot of talk. A lot of talk. A little action. Paul had his difficult churches and many other things. Paul had physical resistance. Being beat. Have you ever read the story about him getting put in prison? And being shipwrecked at sea for like two days afloat? I mean that guy is hardcore. Before, Jesus had his cross.

And you have your what? You know what it is. If I told you right now, I'd give you a list. You'd write it down. You know what it is. And what I love about Jesus is Jesus never played the victim card. You see, Jesus was being victimized on the cross. But he never played the victim card. Jesus was able to be victimized but never take on the role of a victim.

See, Jesus knew that his father was in control. He knew that God had everything about him. And he never blamed anyone else for his predicament. Because no one could take his life. No one could crucify him. And the same is true for you. That no one can do things that God doesn't allow or have or that we don't allow for ourselves. And so Jesus never played that role.

He never pointed it's their fault that I haven't become what I'm supposed to be. It's that person's fault. It's this reason. It's, oh, I was raised or the money isn't right or what. There was never that with Jesus. There was always an understanding that his father has got this. You see, being a victim is one of the biggest walls of resistance that you can put in front of yourself.

Don't be a victim. You are not a victim. If you are a son or daughter of the living God, your father, your, as I would say, papa, has got this. You are not a victim. Resistance invites you to be the victim. I want to say if faith is going to go viral in this church, if faith is going to go viral in your heart, you're going to have to overcome with God.

And maybe angels will have to come and pull you out. Resistance. Resistance. Because there will be resistance. Yielding to resistance, I would say, deforms your soul. This is from, I took this from my reading, The War of Art. He says, yielding to resistance deforms your soul. It causes you to not be who you are built to be. Now, he gives this story.

It was amazing. I don't know if you've read much of World War II history. I'm fascinated by World War II history. I'm just fascinated by it. What was happening? What was happening geopolitically? What was happening spiritually? What was happening with the Jewish people? It's just a fascinating time. Did you know that Hitler wanted to be an artist? He wanted to be an artist.

As a matter of fact, he was part of putting together the propaganda and picked the colors for the Nazi flag and the scheme. I read William Shearer's. Biggest book I've ever read. William Shearer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It's like that big. I was really happy that I read that. Because it was like a big, thick book. And I actually finished one.

Big, thick book. Like the Bible. Why am I talking like this? Right. So Hitler wanted, he felt called, built to be an artist. And he went to art school. I think it was in Salzburg. And he got some negative feedback, some negative criticism. And he quit. The author that I'm reading said this. In the end, it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to stand in front of a canvas and be the person he was built to be.

Let me say that again. In the end, it was easier for him to fold to the resistance in his life. Someone's negative criticism of him. The wall of, can I really pull this off? It was easier for him to start World War II than it was to stand in front of a canvas and paint. Because that's what he was called to be. And that's what he was built to be.

And his soul in the interim was deformed. What is that? What's that thing? That resistance. We know that there's a Jewish leaders here that are trying to stand in front of the church. And so we have that happening in a profound way. And as a church here, we are going to have things that are going to cause resistance. Because unity in a church is very difficult.

Unity is hard to keep in a church. But besides having that happen on a larger scale, the individual people have to be facing the resistance and overcoming resistance. Now imagine what a church would look like if we began to all overcome the resistance in our life. What if in this month of January, and you can start before January if you want, we all began to look at the ifs in our life.

That if I did this, and we all began to attack them with all the purpose and all the determination that God would offer us. What would it look like if we all began to do that? And how would that change the body? You see, in order to change the entire body of us living as a group or a community, we need to change in an individual place. Yielding to resistance deforms your soul.

I think that's true. I think it's true for me. And when we begin to run in the freedom of who we are built to be, begin to speak words of love, begin to take on board the message of God's life for us, your soul will begin to bloom. Let's unpack the text. Let's look at these two buts, these two conjunctions. The first one is this. But, verse 17, the high priest rose up and all who were with him, that is the party of the Sadducees, Sadducees, and filled with jealousy.

They arrested the apostles and put them in public prison. Let me ask you, what's rising up against you right now? And usually when one thing rises up, multiple things rise up with it. Usually it's not just one thing. And you can see that when the leaders came together, the Sadducees joined them. That they will gather up. But it's oftentimes easy to fold under the resistance.

This was a church that said, we are not willing to fold. That had a steep determination to say, we will stand up in the face of resistance and do what we are built to do. Nothing will stop us. Nothing will stop us. What stops you? How easily are we discouraged? Does it just take one person to say, you know what, I don't really like that thing you made.

Or, you're not sitting at the cool kid table. Or, or some blow or some financial. The check doesn't come in that you're expecting. And then all of a sudden you're just off the mat. You're just done. There's no determination. There's no, there's no will to say, God, I want to stand up. I want to go to that place and speak words of life into that place.

And so we see here with this, that that first but is that God was moving. And when you begin to take ground in your spiritual life, there will be resistance. You see, the enemy almost always wants to have a counterattack. But if he can get you to self-sabotage yourself, all the better. See, I'm a firm believer that the enemy doesn't attack many people because most of us are built to self-sabotage ourselves.

I can just leave that one alone. Because they'll take care of it on their own. Keep the bottle in their hand, keep the lies on their tongue. Whatever the thing is that they use to self-sabotage their life, to not become who God has built them to be, then I don't have to work with them. I don't have to deal with them. Because they'll do it on their own.

So when good things are happening, this resistance rises up. It says, But the high priest rose up and all that were with him. Verse 19 is our second conjunction because the enemy always has a plan to come against the work of God. But we see that it is never unanswered by God. Look at verse 19. But, I love this, God is at work. But during the night, during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out.

During the night. I want to say, maybe it's night time for you right now. Maybe it's a season right now where there's some darkness in an area. And like I said earlier in the message, that God does his best work in the darkness. God does his best work right before dawn. He does his best work. We know in John 21, when Jesus shows, it says, Right at the breaking of the dawn, Jesus comes and he's standing there.

Peter is discouraged. Peter has given up. He's fishing. And he's just given up on Jesus completely. But then in that symbolic moment, like we saw in John when we preached through it, Jesus is there and he's saying, Come to me. And maybe in the darkest part of your life right now, in that darkest area, Jesus is saying, Come to me. Maybe just sit and say to him, Help.

Just help. Peter jumped into the Galilee and swam to Jesus. And I thought so much about what that three-minute, four-minute swim, what was going through his mind. What was going through his mind? When he had lost everything. He had betrayed. He had wanted to be the premier disciple. They were, you know, biding for Jesus' attention. They wanted to have authority and power.

And then he had failed publicly. Our society loves public fails now. We love it. Shame. Public fail. Just go to Vons. Go check something out at Vons. You want to see shame? Words of death? A culture of death that churns people out and spits them out? We live in it. And Jesus says, When you have publicly failed me, when you have denied me personally, he says what?

Come to me. And he's the kind of savior. He's the kind of good father. He's the kind of Messiah that says, Swim to me. And when you see him, you want to. And Jesus calls you. Maybe it's time to jump into Galilee. I want to say, Maybe it's time to jump into Galilee and say, Nothing is going to keep me from Jesus. The sexual relationship that I'm in, that I realize is not God's intention for my life, I'm done.

The addiction, the relationship, whatever the resistance is, to say, No more will that keep me from being who God has called me to be. What would your life look like? And are you willing to face it? Are you willing to live in that place? It says that during the night, he said, Then the angel comes to them, and he opens the prison doors, and brought them out, and he says, Go, stand in the temple, speak to the people all the words of life.

God is looking to break out of the darkness, and the prison doors of your life. He's desperate. He's broken down the prison doors, that had us locked in the clutches of the enemy, that kept us in death, eternal separation from God, and he has broken those open. If he can break those open, he can break open the doors that stand in front of you now. Perhaps they're already open.

You know, I know so many times in my life, I've thought a door was closed when it was open. I just didn't want to leave the cell. How bad do you want to leave the cell? Are we tired of blaming other people for it? Peter wasn't blaming anybody anymore. Oh, the disciples, oh, the Romans, the Jews. I just want to be with Jesus. I just want to be with Jesus.

So I'm finding that rising up in my soul lately. I just, I know some things that are resisting me. Some of them are actual, are resistance from the enemy. And some are just things, I'm just content. It's good enough. It's good enough. I just don't want good enough to be good enough. So we see this, we're overcoming, how do we overcome resistance? Three quick things and we're out.

First of all, you need to understand the resistance. The apostles understood not only who was oppressing them, but also the why behind the oppression. This is super important. A lot of times there's resistance coming at you and you see the resistance, but we fail to understand the why behind the what. You see, the truth is, is of healing comes in the why.

When we can understand the why, why do we yield to that temptation? Why do we continue to have fear? What, what is that key? What is that thing that keeps us allowing ourselves to be in the resistance? My sweetheart, I need you to go back that way. Thank you. Thank you, Joanna. All right. So what is that thing that keeps us there and in that resistance?

Understanding the why. And this is where I think things like counseling matter. You know, I think these where we seek God in prayer to understand why is it the way it is. If you have a resistance that has been in your life for a long time, it's oftentimes because we've accepted it. And we don't understand why, or we don't want to be changed. I got to say, one of the, one of the most, um, uh, discouraging examples of this is the abused spouse.

The person who has been in a relationship where they're being abused, but they can't get out of the abusive relationship because the draw to be wanted and liked is so, the need for that is so much stronger than being willing to break out. And they're not willing to oftentimes pay the cost of what it would cost to get out of that relationship.

Now I know every situation is different, but I do know that there is a psychosis involved with spousal abuse, that people will stay in spousal abuse, um, situations because of the payoff that at least someone, he tells me he loves me on occasion when he's not drunk, he's kind to me. And they stay there for years because they're not willing to say and stand up against him and say, I'm willing to have to have not feel the acceptance that they give.

Does that make sense? That I'm not will, I'm not willing to pay the cost of what it would take to leave this relationship. I know. And once again, I know that some, there's a lot of components in that, but what are those things that keep us the payoffs often that keep us from going up against resistance, being willing to under accept the consequences of overcoming resistance.

Let me just point this out here in the scripture. Peter and the apostles were now willing to accept the consequences of speaking the name of Jesus. Jesus and the words of life. They were willing to go to prison. You see, and die. You see, before Jesus was crucified, they were willing to talk a big game, but they weren't willing to go stand with Jesus and be persecuted for Jesus.

They weren't willing to go to prison. They weren't willing to be killed. And the reason we know this is because they all fled and they were scattered. But we see now that something has happened. There's been an if in their life. There's been a moment of truth where they said no more. In this moment, in this moment, we will be different. We will be changed.

And I believe for Peter, it was, it happened when he was swimming in that water to Jesus. And so we see now that he was willing to accept the consequences, whatever they were to face the resistance. He was willing to face the abuse. He was willing to go to prison. So we see that he's willing. Let me ask this. Are you willing to accept the consequences of what it would take to overcome your resistance?

Number two, never lose fact in the hope that God does his best work in the dark. But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors. John 1, 5 says this, a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Another way to say that is it has not understood it. Has not understood it. Don't lose hope. Hope. Hope is, do you know that, that hope isn't, isn't, isn't, is, is a spiritual commodity that can only be harvested from God.

You can have hope in your own, but the hope that God talks about, eternal hope has to come. It's supernatural. Hope has to be harvested from God. And so you say in prayer, God, would you give me hope? Give me hope. Find hope. And what I want to say to you is if you have been lost in your resistance for so long, don't give up hope. If you feel that there's a darkness, do not give up in the darkness.

Stand in the darkness and cry out to God and say, God, bring your light because God does his best work when it's dark. And if you were in darkness now, just know that God is so close to you. God is so close to you. He's on the next sunrise. He's at the next spark of hope. And the final is this. Go, stand, and live. Go. Take steps. He said, they said to him, the angel came to him and he said, go.

They had to go. He didn't, he pulled them out of the prison, but then he said, I need you to meet me halfway. I need you to go. Are you willing to go to the place where you might have to face more resistance? Go. Put your feet on the ground and go. Where do you have to go to meet the resistance, to overcome the resistance? I want to challenge you, church.

Go. Go. This might be the moment. This, this, this welling up in your soul right now that is saying, hey, that addiction, no more. This relationship, no more. Or whatever it is, this dysfunctional relationship, whatever it is, whatever fear, maybe this is the moment where your hand is being grabbed and he's giving you the courage to go out from this place today and make a stand and go to that place.

When I got sober, I called my three best friends. I'd been in Mexico the night before, September 9th, passed out in a gutter. You guys know the story. Friend picked me up. I went to Point Loma Nazarene College. They dropped me off. I had gotten accepted into there and I had to sign a thing that said I would not drink anymore. I was tired of being an alcoholic drug addict.

I'd cry in my apartment at night. I wanted out. I'd want it out for a long time. I couldn't get out. And I ended up at Point Loma Nazarene. And it was like this, God just pulled me out and put me there. And I said, I'm not going to leave this campus for six months. And you don't need to. There's surf. There's everything. It's awesome. God just threw me there.

And I called my best friends and I said, look, said, Nick, you know, Tori, those are my two closest friends. I called them and I said, hey, I'm not going to be there Friday night the next time we have a party. Oh yeah, you will. Tori said, yeah, you will. I'll see you Friday night. I said, I'm not going. I didn't show up. And I said, we can't even hang out. That was really hard.

These are my best friends. I had no friends. Cut it all off. And I didn't leave. I went to my grandma's house. She made me food and did my laundry. I know. I was 19. I couldn't have been doing my own laundry. I did that for six months, started going to Bible studies. And all of a sudden God changed everything. I've been sober now going on 27 years. And it started with a, yeah, God's good.

Go. Go. I'm giving you your marching orders. Go. Go. Go. Stand. Stand. When you've done everything to stand, the scripture says, do what? Stand. Ephesians. When it says the enemy, how to fight against the enemy, it doesn't tell you to go fight. It says, stand there. It says, put on the armor of God and stand there. Go. And then just stand there. And all hell is probably going to break out against you.

And just stand. Do everything you can to stand. And when you have stood, stand. You don't have to go make proclamations. You don't have to go win the world. You don't have to go be Superman or Superwoman right now. Just go to the place and stand there with God. And in the power of his might and his grace. And finally, this is the good part. Live. Live.

Live. Stop dying. Live. What would it look like if every day you got up and you said, I'm going to live. I've been trying to do this now for a few months. It's working. Live. Get up. Smile. When we drive through La Jolla, my wife said, we're just going to bless people when they cut you off. Because it's part of the culture. Right? I want to make a bumper sticker.

Drive kind La Jolla. And just give them out from our church. Like, you know. But then I got to do it. Right? Who's been cut off in La Jolla? Raise your, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The streets are built to be cut off. On Gerard, cut me off. Right? Kerry said, what if we just bless people? Just bless them. Hey, go ahead. Bless you. I've been doing it. It works. Life.

You can give life or I can give death. I can curse them. That's what curses are anyways. It's death. Every time we curse, you know, they call them curse words for a reason. They're death. I won't get into the whole thing, but it's death. When you speak curse words, you speak death. You speak curse over your life. Theologically, we can get into that. It's another point.

Live. Go live. What would it look like to be happy? Some people don't want you to be happy. They struggle with happy people. What would it look like if you live? Go, stand, and live. And I want to release you into life. Let me give you permission to live and enjoy your life. Have you ever met a cancer patient who enjoys their life? I have. You ever met somebody under extreme opposition, but they've decided, I am going to enjoy the life that God has given me.

It is resistance. Everything in the world is saying, do not live. The world is built for death, and in order to live is a cultural resistance to say, I will live. I will live. Let's have the band come forward. Lord Jesus, we just bless you, Jesus. God, as we sing now this final song, we want to sing it with words of life in our hearts. God, people are standing looking at some strong walls of resistance right now, and they're asking themselves, do I want to go?

Do I want to stand? And do I want to live? Lord Jesus, I pray over this congregation, God, that as we sing this song, God, we would spend less time thinking about whether we should go or not, and just run with grace-filled abandon out of those prison doors. Just stand, if you would.