June 26, 2021: Finding Hope in Our Story, Acts 26:2-23 (NIV)

Our Foundational Question From Last Sunday: Where can Hope be Found as Individuals, at White Bluff, and in the Savannah Community?

Our Foundational Truth #1 was this… All People Need Hope.

Our Foundational Truth #2 was this… Everlasting Hope is Found in Christ Alone.

Today, we are talking about our story. Some people call our story a testimony. Others call it the way we talk about our life’s journey.

Maya Angelou famously once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”

Brene Brown, renowned speaker, and author, said that we should “tell [our] story with [our] whole heart”.

The challenge today as we prepare to read Paul’s story from Acts 26 out of the NIV is for us to find hope within our story, no matter how hairy the details may be so that the Holy Spirit power that first brought us to faith in Jesus can attract to the throne of Jesus Christ as well.

In Acts 26:2-23 (NIV) Paul is testifying to King Agrippa when he says,

2 “King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate to stand before you today as I make my defense against all the accusations of the Jews, 3 and especially so because you are well acquainted with all the Jewish customs and controversies. Therefore, I beg you to listen to me patiently.

4 “The Jewish people all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in Jerusalem. 5 They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that I conformed to the strictest sect of our religion, living as a Pharisee. 6 And now it is because of my hope in what God has promised our ancestors that I am on trial today. 7 This is the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night. King Agrippa, it is because of this hope that these Jews are accusing me. 8 Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?

9 “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.

12 “On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. 14 We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic,[a] ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

15 “Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’

“ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 16 ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. 20 First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds. 21 That is why some Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. 22 But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— 23 that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”

Revisiting Today’s Scripture...

Paul tells his story or testimony to King Agrippa. For context, Festus represented the Roman authorities in the courts. Paul was a Roman who by this point was working with the Jews. By law, prosecuting a Roman was a lot harder than prosecuting a Jew for a perceived crime. King Agrippa II, Festus’ boss, was called to give a report to the Roman Emporer Nero about Paul. So, he visits Paul and Paul gives him the low down on what’s been going on. In v. 2-11, Paul tells of his life before Christ, as frightful as it may be even though he killed Christians and persecuted the very being he would later call Lord. In v. 12-18, he gives his conversion experience on the Damascus road... the account of how he was saved. Then he finishes in v. 19-23 by talking about what God’s doing through him more recently. We preachers might say that it is a pretty good testimony to an unchurched group of people.

A Bright, Blazing Light in v. 13: “13 About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.”

As we move forward, I’d like to focus for a moment on v. 13. Paul tells King Agrippa about his Damascus road conversion experience. He says, “13 About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.”

-This is important because this bright and powerful light was so strong as to be impressive even in the midday sun. The voice Paul hears is the same except for the assertion that “It hurts you to kick against the goads” (26:14). You may be asking, what is a goad? Good question! A goad is a spiked still used for driving cattle. Greek literature often used the phrase to refer to the futility of pushing against a greater power. Sometimes it was and is easier to just go with the flow. It would be like trying to swim against the rip tides or a plane flying directly into the jet stream. Both can be done, but the energy used is so much greater and more exhausting than moving with the current or wind.

-Paul is saying that in his life, he felt like he had it all figured out until he realized the futility of pushing against God. The presence and force of God was so awesome in the life of Paul that not only did Paul receive Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he responded to God’s call to share his story with others as well.

As We Accept Christ as Our Lord and Savior, We Now Have That Bright Light Blazing in Us.

-Have you ever had a fire blazing within you to do or accomplish something? The blazing fire is so great that often you will stop at nothing just to achieve the goal. Call it a calling, mission, pursuit, summons, or any number of other words. The end goal is clear. Something is within us that must come out of us and into fruition in the world around us in order for the blazing light within us to be satisfied.

The Key to satisfying the Blazing Light of Jesus Christ that burns deeply within us is to get out of God’s way. Sometimes we allow our agendas, comfort levels, or something else to get in the way of God’s blazing light. But like a raging forest fire, we want the light of Christ to burn so brightly within us that the burning light can’t help but engulf everything that surrounds us.

Paul told his story to stoke the blazing light in the world around him. Telling our story is the key to stoking the fire in our hearts, at White Bluff, and beyond.

John 1:5 (NLT) says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”

Why Should We Tell Our Story? It has Spirit given power to bring others to faith in Jesus Christ.

We tell our story because it’s relatable. Like it or not, we are often closest to the people whom we can relate to the most. People are certain occupations may hang with people of similar occupations because they get each other. The same holds true with socioeconomic statuses and similar faith traditions. We like to ‘get’ other people just as we want other people to ‘get’ us. It’s just natural. So if it is natural to hang around people that are similar to us, it also will make sense that people similar to us may like the things that we like… including our church. Often the key to sharing our faith story is not going to some far off land to share Christ. It is learning how to share Christ with the people that we already know. Sometimes it is as simple as inviting someone to come to church with us. Other times, especially when we know and trust the other person enough to be more intimate, we can do a deeper dive into our faith story.

How Do We Tell Our Story?

Application Point #1: Embrace Your Darkness.

-Paul did not try to hide who he was before Christ. He spent the first nine verses of today’s Scripture addressing it. Embracing our darkness may also include coming to grips with things that have happened to us even while knowing Christ. As Scott Peck said so long ago in the Road Less Traveled, “Life is Hard.” As Charles Dickinson said, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” He was right wasn’t he? Just like us, the BIble includes people who inevitably experienced danger, risk, suspense and testing. The BIble contains stories of people who were wanderers and came up with covenants only to break them. Paul’s is a story of international travel, for he and his companions visit nearly all the major cities of the Greco-Roman world of the time. The narrative has virtually all the ingredients that are possible in a travel story: adventure, excitement, suspense, danger, shipwreck, the exotic appeal of faraway places, memorable encounters with individuals and groups, riots, arrests, imprisonments, trials, escapes, rescues.

In all of these stories, the people’s life story eventually brings with it an encounter with God where God is revealed in the life story of each individual. To give the part of our story where we encounter God’s deliverance without addressing the darkness God has delivered us out of is like telling the story of the resurrection on Easter Sunday without the excruciating pain that Jesus encountered at the cross. We must embrace our darkness in order for our story to be complete.

Think about a time when you were hurting. Who was it that helped you through your hurt? That person most likely was someone who had been there before and understood your pain and grief in a way that someone else could not. That person’s dark experience allowed them to be light for you as you came through the darkness to light at the end of the tunnel.

Application Point #2: Seek Out Help To Find Healing and Transformation

Not only can we not take people where we have not been, we cannot take people to a place of healing if we have not dealt with the circumstances and trauma of our own situation by finding healing and transformation.

Paul had Ananias. Some of us have had a favorite counselor, life coach, mentor, family member, or friend who have walked through a traumatic event. And still some of us are still dealing with life events that may have happened a short or long time ago. The important thing to know is that if we do not deal with our trauma, it will always resurface in unexpected and often unhealthy ways. While it may not be fun to meet our trauma head on, it is the key to moving to a place where we can feel whole. We may never tell anyone exactly what we experienced. But after we’ve dealt with our pain, we can hand in hand with others in their process of recovery.

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It is a true sign of strength.

Application Point #3: Share Your Story so that Others Can Be Transformed

In 1737 or 1738, John Wesley attended one of these Moravian love feasts and adopted the idea for the Methodists. Like the Moravians, Wesley’s love feast included warm personal testimonies. Both the love feast and the testimony became common among Methodists in Wesley’s time, continuing after his death as a special praise service.

-Lawyer-turned-revivalist Charles Finney (1792–1875) employed personal testimony as a regular feature of his services. Finney, a Presbyterian, was a practicing “method-ist” when it came to revival; he was a man of methods. Finney figured that getting a revival to happen was essentially a matter of using what he called “the right methods”. In the testimony, the congregation heard a personal story from a regular person who lived down the street in their town. Finney used the worship service as a tool for bringing men and women to faith in Jesus, not just for the worship of God.

Church used to be like the baseball movie “Field of Dreams”… if you build it, they will come. And they came! Methodists and Presbyterians by and large ruled the frontier lands of the early United States through camp meeting style evangelism. Billy Graham gave the altar call with 100 verses of “Just As I Am.”

In today’s culture, the message does not change, only how we deliver it. It must be relational and meet the person where they are. That’s why sharing our stories are more crucial than ever. People don’t want us to care until they know that we care.

Coffee, Dinner, Gospel

In his book “Evangelism in a Skeptical World”, Sam Chand offers a three-pronged approach to telling others about Jesus called “coffee, dinner, and gospel”. Start by inviting someone to coffee, understanding that most people view coffee with an acquaintance as non-threatening. In this stage focus more on developing a friendship than an immediate proclamation of Christ. As the relationship progresses, we may invite their friend to dinner, with the goal of building the friendship on a deeper level. Eventually, after many shared meals over time, more in-depth conversations naturally develop including discussions about faith. Chand says that when we are given the opportunity, we should be ready to tell our story and/ or issue an invite to church.

Chand says that part of the problem is the Christians and non-Christians are stuck in their respective bubbles. Christians associate mostly with Christians and non-Christians associate mostly with non-Christians. It is important that we continually look for ways to cross and merge our bubbles so that Christians have an opportunity to share Christ with those who need to know Jesus. In 2020 it was estimated that 1/3 of the world population were Christians. That leaves us 66% of the world that we can share our story with so that they can come to faith in Christ as well.

Bringing others to Christ requires that we are personal and relational.

Use Your Platform to Share Christ

At the 2017 Teen Choice Awards, Actor Chris Pratt, who is married to Arnold Swartzenagers daughter said "I would not be here with the ease and grace I have in my heart without my lord and savior, Jesus Christ." It was a simple sentence, but heard around the world.

Actor Mark Wahlberg told Relevant magazine that he credits his Christianity for his success in Hollywood."My faith and my family are the most important things," he said. "Those things allow me to be successful in all the other things that I’m doing."

Joanna Gaines of HGTV’s Fixer Upper is not shy about her faith. She writes, "I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become."

God Uses Our Story to Bring Hope to Others

I was not a bad kid growing up. Perhaps the worst things I did were more minor behavior infractions from time to time. I accepted Christ November 22, 1991 at Epworth by the Sea on St Simons Island. Throughout high school, college, and beyond, I served in various Christian leadership capacities until I went into full time ministry. Overall, I have been blessed. Some of my more difficult experiences have come since becoming an adult. Even then, God’s amazing grace has always seen me through.

Dr. James Andrews, a renowned orthopedic baseball surgeon who specializes in Tommy John surgery for pitchers, said that some pitchers have asked him if they can get the surgery so that they can throw even harder. They didn’t even need the surgery! In a television interview he said that there is a great fallacy in believing that going through the surgery could in any way make a pitcher throw harder or more accurate. Pitchers are blessed with what God gave them, for better or worse. You may not have the harrowing story that someone else has. Your darkness may still look like daylight to many. That’s largely my life’s story! God can use all sorts of people for his glory. He uses both largely unbroken and many broken Christians to grow His kingdom. He uses all ages, races, and economic levels. He uses men and women. He uses married and single people. But as different as we may be, we all have one thing in common that God uses… God uses our story to bring hope.

Next Week: Where Can Hope Be Found At White Bluff?

Bring a Friend! You Will Not Want to Miss It!

Accepting Jesus as Your Lord and Savior

Admit your need and turn from your sin. We are all sinners in need of repentance. - Acts 3:19

Believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave. - John 3:36

Confess your sins to God. - 1 John 1:9

Through prayer, invite Jesus Christ to come in and control your life through the Holy Spirit who comes into your heart. In this step, we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior. - 1 John 1:12

Let me know so that as your Pastor, I can rejoice with you and shepherd you in your newfound faith! Email: [e-mail] Phone: [phone]

Let us pray...The Grass Withers, The Flower Fades, but the Word of Our Lord Endures Forever! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.