Resilience | Strength - Acts 3-4

is so good to be back here. And I love that video for a couple of reasons. One is because it's gonna, it kind of gives you a taste of, hey, what next week is coming and how you can say, you come and see to your one that you're praying for. But also it kind of depicts some of the things that go on here regularly that we're actually gonna end on in today's scripture as we go through this new topic. Let me kick off with a story. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis to find a path to the West Coast of the United States. A year later, the Corps of Discovery led by Meriwether and Lewis departed because they were convinced, and they, being all the experts in the world at the time, believed there was the existence of something called the Northwest Passage. They believed that the rivers that flowed to the East Coast of the United States also would lead to the beginnings of a river that would go to the Pacific Ocean, that this would be a key trade route in the world, and whichever country discovered it first would own trade and prosper economically much more than anyone else. It would kind of be like that equivalent

of if you owned the internet today. If one country could do that, they'd just have all the money. And so they set out, and it took 15 months to get there. Other countries had their own expeditions. Spain sent two hunting parties to kill and execute the Meriwether and Lewis expedition. But 15 months after they began, they ended in their canoes going up a creek in Montana that was the beginnings of the Missouri River. They were convinced that once they crested the hill in front of them, they would put their canoes in another small stream that would then lead to a river that would lead to the Pacific Ocean. They thought it was just gonna be easy, smooth sailing. But when they crested the hill, they saw an unexpected surprise, what one man called later the most terrible sight my eyes ever beheld. Instead of a gentle slope downward with a stream in which they could put their canoes, up rose, as far as the eye could see in every direction, Rocky Mountains. It was not gonna be easy. The world was different than what every expert had told them it would be. They had to traverse mountains, and the only tool they had to do it was canoes.

They were gonna have to adapt if they were gonna thrive. I believe that picture of staring at mountains, holding nothing but canoes, is a picture that explains a lot of what many of us who've been Christians a while feel. And if you're new to the faith, but have been trained by someone older than you, it's what you feel as well. I think it's captured in a book that Aaron Wren wrote entitled Life in a Negative World. Aaron Wren is a sociologist, and he says, that I think is accurate, we used to live, we being Christians, in a positive world. Maybe this was a couple decades ago, more than that, where if you told someone, I am a Christian who stands on the Bible and believes Jesus is the only path to God, that you were viewed in a positive light, typically, people would say things like, oh, that's good. We need people who believe. I don't believe, but I'm glad you believe because belief in itself is a good thing. Kinda didn't make logical sense in the faith, but that's how the world received you. He says, then we moved into a neutral world, where if you told someone, I'm a Christian who stands on God's word, they would respond in a neutral way. They'd say, hey, that's fine if you believe that, just keep it to yourself.

Anybody can believe what they want, as long as they don't force it on other people. Right, you've encountered that. But he says, then we've moved into, in recent years, a negative world. He dates it, and you could change the date if you want, to 2014, when so-called gay marriage became legal. But he says, there's a time in our culture, a tipping point, where we reach the point where if you say, I stand on God's word as the authority for all people, I believe Jesus is our sole source of hope, that people would view you in a negative light, and actually say, you're what's wrong with the world. People are hurting and dying because of your beliefs, you're evil. And Aaron Rand's whole point is that we need to make sure we have the right mindset for how we live in the culture in which we find ourselves. So if you even wanna think it through a biblical lens, we don't live currently in a world like David in the Bible did, where it was a God-centered culture. We live much more in a world like Esther or Daniel did, that was a God-less culture. And so, you experience this in your own life, right? People roll their eyes at you when you tell them you don't watch or follow certain things because they lead you astray. You're passed over for a promotion at work because you refused to put pronouns

in your email signature. You have a family member who won't even come to Thanksgiving with you because they say, well, I know how you must have voted based on your biblical beliefs, and so I can't even eat with somebody who believes like that. Bottom line is a bunch of us were taught the faith on how to act in a positive world, but we now find ourselves. in a world that is hostile. We have canoes, but in front of us are mountains. So the word that Scott has so wisely identified that needs to define us is resilience. In fact, I want everybody to say that out loud. One, two, three, go. Resilience. That's the key word for this series. Write that on your notes. Resilience is the ability of a substance to have strength and flexibility. It can be strong under pressure without breaking and it can be flexible. So, for example, a rubber band is resilient because it's strong. You can wrap it around cords or note cards and it'll be strong to hold that together and it's flexible, go back to its normal shape. I learned that steel, interestingly, is resilient. Steel is designed to be able to bend a little bit

without breaking. So the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, 2,700 feet tall, was designed knowing that sometimes there's extremely high winds there and the top of it, when it has high winds, will sway five feet in either direction because that's how it was built. That's what steel does, which kind of puts in perspective that Tom Cruise picture where he's just kind of lazily hanging out on top of it and also makes me feel a little more sympathy that I used to make fun of Will Smith and how he was up there. He's swaying back and forth because steel's resilient. I'm convinced we need to develop resilience. We need resilience to make it through hard times, to fight evil, to be the men and women God wants us to be. We need resilience to navigate broken relationships and hard family things. We need resilience when it seems the world around us is working against us. Resilience is strength and flexibility. So today, we're gonna talk through Scripture about strength. Next week, Scott is gonna talk about resilient flexibility. Strength is the ability to bend, not break and I believe you need this for three reasons. One, you need to not break under temptation. My opinion, it is easier to sin in secret today

than any time in human history. You can look at porn and delete the search history, nobody knows. You can DM somebody you're not married to, your spouse won't find out. You can create a separate bank account, shuffle some of your money over there, lose it all in gambling, nobody will ever know. But, James 4 verse 7 says resist the devil and he will flee from you. You need resilience if you're not gonna break under temptation. You need to not break under cultural pressure. In our culture, we're told not to bring our faith into politics. We're told by people who don't believe the Bible that we're misrepresenting the Bible. We're told essentially, you just sit down, shut up, you stay over there in the corner, Christian. But, Jesus says, you're the light of the world. We need a strength that won't break as we speak bold truth into a dark world. And you need to not break in evangelism. You get intimidated to tell other people about Jesus because you don't have all the answers. You feel dumb. In addition, they know how you've fallen in life and you're afraid they're gonna think, who are you to tell me how to get my life together? But, Jesus says, go into all the world

and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. We need a strength that will not break if we're gonna see our people, our one, from come and see to with all my heart. So, today, we're gonna open the scripture to Acts chapter three and four in the Bible and look at a story of Peter and John, two of Jesus' closest followers. They're gonna encounter some opposition. They're gonna be threatened. They're gonna be thrown in jail. But, they show resilient strength. So, we're gonna look at what is resilient strength and at the end, we're gonna say, well, how do we get that? Starts in Acts chapter three, verse one. Peter and John were going to the temple at the hour of prayer, in the ninth hour. Now, when they get there, there's a man who's always hanging on the same spot at the entrance to the temple. He can't walk. He begs for money, begs for food. Everybody in the temple sees him every day. As Peter and John are walking in, he says, do you have any money for me? Peter says, I don't have money, but in the name of Jesus, get up and walk. He does. He's jumping, he's walking, he's running, he's thrilled and it causes this commotion in the temple

because everybody knows who he is that he can't normally walk. It's wild. What I want you to catch at first, though, is this. Peter and John are just doing what they always do. They just have a habit of going up the temple for communal prayer. Here's the first lesson, write this down. Resilient strength is ready for the unexpected. They're just going to the temple to pray. That's it. They have no idea this day will be anything out of the ordinary. Strength that will not break is often needed when you least expect it. You rarely wake up thinking today's the day where I'm going to face the opposition and I need to be strong. Riley Gaines is the UK swimmer who in 2022 went to NCAA championships wanting nothing more than to mind her own business and swim. But when she tied with a man acting as a woman who had previously competed on the men's swimming team of his university, Riley Gaines was asked by the officials to step out of the picture. They wanted the photo op just with him and she would get her award separately later. This was Gaines' moment. She refused to step aside. She publicly objected, arguing that allowing men

to compete in women's sports is unfair and erased opportunities for female athletes. It went viral, it became a national story. Gaines faced intense backlash, there were protests, there were threats against her life, but she refused to stay silent. And she has since testified before Congress, she's had all kinds of TV appearances, and she's built a social media and speaking platform to promote women's sports, and essentially what she talks about the whole time is the biblical worldview of gender. Now think of this, as she's swimming laps training for the NCAA championship, I hope this lets me testify before Congress. As she's putting on her swimsuit that day, she's not thinking, I wonder if I'll go viral for this and get threatened. But there was something in what she did in the quiet place alone, in how she trained her mind, in how she trained her soul that said, I will not back down from the way God created things. Resilient strength is needed at unpredictable times. No one knows when their spouse is gonna cheat. You don't know when you'll get the teacher who picks on Christians. You can't predict when your HR department will institute a policy that pushes you into a corner. Resilient strength is always ready. So back to the Bible, the man's healed, big commotion,

Peter preaches an impromptu sermon. And I wanna show it to you, but I'm gonna underline, because I want you to see all the Old Testament references, all the references to the first half of the Bible that he just preaches in this sermon he's making up. The God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of our fathers, glorified a servant Jesus, Peter says. But what God foretold by the mouth of the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he's fulfilled. Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. Listen to him in whatever he tells you. And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaim these days. You are the sons of those prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So I want you to see, over and over and over, Peter is quoting the Bible. He knows the scriptures. Catch this, resilient strength is rooted in scripture. The reason Peter can just preach this sermon with great boldness is because he knows the scriptures. Several years ago now, I was in a small group where it was suggested that we read the entire Bible cover to cover as a group, and that's hard enough to do in a year, but someone suggested let's do it in 90 days.

Yeah, awesome group. And so we each got a chronological Bible that didn't put it in order of types of writing but put it in order of when it happens. That made it a little more interesting. But we just started reading. And when you're reading the Bible in 90 days, you're not trying to look for like a little phrase here and there or one word that stands out to you. You're just catching the big picture the whole way through. And so in Genesis, God tells Abraham, through your offspring, everybody in the world is gonna be blessed. And then in Exodus, Moses leads the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to the promised land eventually. But then as I kept reading, they kept repeating that story. And so in Deuteronomy, Moses tells the story, yeah, that you were slaves in Egypt, led you to the promised land. And Joshua tells the story, you were slaves in Egypt, led you to the promised land. Samuel tells the story, slaves in Egypt, led you to the promised land. The Psalms talk about it all the time, over and over and over. And by the time we get to the prophets and they're talking about it, I was sitting there thinking, guys, can we get a new story already? I gotta get through this in 90 days and you're just telling the same story over and over.

But when I thought about the context, it began to make sense. Because what you see in the Scriptures is when the people of God remember how God was faithful in the past, they are faithful to him in the present. And when the people of God forget how God was faithful in the past, they are unfaithful to him in the present. In fact, in a time of great unfaithfulness, they decide to do some temple renovations. They find this dusty old scroll, they blow it off. They spread it out before the king. And as they all look over it together, they realize, oh, this is the Bible. We'd heard that this existed. We just never actually seen or read it before. And the same is true for us. When we remember how God was faithful in the past, we're faithful in the present. And when we forget how God was faithful in the past, we're unfaithful in the present. And this is why the faithful Christian who. wants to be resilient is in the scriptures every day. This is why you read it in the morning, this is why you listen to it on your commute, this is why you study it and recall it at night as you're laying down. Because you have something in your life where you need God to step in and be faithful. And it may be happening right now, it could be yet to come, but he's preparing you for it.

And so when you open the scriptures in the quiet place and meet with Jesus, it's not just to check a religious checkbox and say, I got through the thing I had to do today, it's to meet God there and have him equip you there because you're being trained to be strong, to be resilient. You gotta be rooted in the scriptures. Verse one of chapter four, and as they were speaking to the people, the priests, captain of the temple, and Sadducees came upon them. These are the religious leaders, okay? Greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. They arrested them and put them in custody till the next day, spend the night in jail. On the next day, they had a big meeting about it, hearing. The rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem. They bring Peter out, he's on trial. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people, elders, if we're being examined today concerning the good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed? So if we're put on trial for what you see, here's what you need to know. Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,

whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him, this man is standing before you well. So Peter has the boldness, he has the strength to say, hey, if you wanna know how this guy got healed, Jesus, but I love the next sentence because honestly, Peter could stop there and we'd all think, hey, Peter, good job being real, being bold, but he takes it a step further. He says, great verse, there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. If I was Peter, I'd be tempted to leave this out and say 95% of the truth, but leave off the last 5% that just says, here's the full message, guys, that you need to know. Here's the lesson, resilient strength tells the full truth. We are so tempted in this negative world to tell 95% of the truth and stop. But Jesus says in John 8, 32, the truth will set you free. And if that's true, it means all of Jesus' truth is good for all people at all times in all circumstances. And in a negative world, if people get a whiff that you're embarrassed about what God says, that you don't fully buy into what God says, they're out on all of it. And you know where you'll be tempted on this the most? Relationships. I live in Louisville and as you know, Louisville has a bunch of UK basketball fans and a bunch of Louisville basketball fans.

And I just gotta get out there. There's one thing I hear sometimes that really gets on my nerves because it's very common in Louisville to say, what is your team? You know, get to know somebody. And occasionally I'll hear this as an answer. I still don't. They'll say, I cheer for both teams. And I'm like, okay, you either don't like sports or you're an idiot. Like, you can't cheer for both teams. That's just not how it works. Like, right? Are you with me on this? Okay. And so I was meeting with this guy not too long ago and a group of us were together and I'm pretty good friends with him, but I realized, hey, I've never asked you who you cheer for. Who's your team? And he got this look on his face as if he was trying to figure out how to explain the most deep mathematical formula that humankind has ever known. And he proceeds to say, I used to be a diehard Louisville fan, but now I'm a diehard UK fan. I bleed blue.

And I'm like, well, I don't think that happens. Like, I think you just must not have been a Louisville fan before. And he goes, oh no. And he starts naming players and like come from behind victories and like heartbreaking losses over many years. And I'm like, man, this guy like really was into Louisville basketball. But then he starts talking equally about like the UK teams in recent years and same things and specific players and recruiting currently and all the different things. Like, I mean, he bleeds blue. And I'm trying to understand what's going on. His wife's standing there next to him and the longer he talks, the bigger her grin gets. And then I pieced together in my head, oh, she went to UK. She's always bled blue. He went to UK and he changed his team to get the girl. And all the Kentucky ladies are thinking, that's what we do is we bring people into the light, right? And you may say, well, that relationship helped him, but you'll be tempted to have relationships hurt you because it is easy to say God made the male and female Genesis one until your kid comes home from college and says, hey, I start taking hormone blockers. It's easy to say God hates divorce, Malachi chapter two, until your best friend is just suffering in a marriage.

It's easy to say repentance is paired with baptism, Acts chapter two, until the one that you've been praying to baptize says, hey, I'm ready, but they're not gonna give up their OnlyFans account. And there comes this moment for the Christian, just like Peter had, where we have to decide, am I gonna say the full truth? Or will I stop short? Scripture keeps going. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. Isn't that a great phrase? And then this one's great. They recognized they had been with Jesus. May that be said of us. But seeing, I think this phrase is hilarious. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. Like, they don't like their theology, but you kind of healed a guy, so I don't know what else to say. So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them. Guys, whether it's right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you gotta judge. But we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. Now guys, you can tell us this all you want,

but we've been with Jesus. He's changed our lives, he's changing lives around us, so we're gonna keep speaking up. Translation, resilient strength doesn't back down. Meaning, maybe Peter tells the whole truth, but then when he's threatened with jail time, he says, okay guys, I'll give up. But resilient strength doesn't give up. I saw a viral clip of a kid who's not giving up that I could relate to, watch this. Is golf fun? No. Do you like golf? No. Do you wanna play more golf? Yeah. My man. My favorite story of this kind of resilient persistence comes from a guy named Marcus Buckingham. Marcus Buckingham used to work for the Gallup Organization, biggest survey company in the world. And he explains a story that they were one time hired by the world's biggest sales company, international firm, and they explained to Gallup, hey, the biggest thing that affects our bottom line is turnover with staff. We hire these salespeople, they're real enthusiastic, we think they'll be great, but they quit soon, and then we have to get delayed in selling stuff and hiring more people. Can you help us fix that?

Gallup said, okay. They said, give us a list of everybody who's quit here in the last year. They go and survey them. They come back and have a big meeting, they say, hey, we discovered the number one thing that people have in common who don't make it in sales. They said, okay, tell us, we'll write it down. We won't hire these people. They said, well, the number one thing, every single one of them said was, when I make a cold call, whether it's knocking on a door or walking into an office or making a phone call, I get this pit in my stomach of maybe they'll reject me and I won't make the sale and maybe I'll feel like an idiot and they didn't like that feeling, so they didn't wanna be in sales and they left. The company said, great, we'll go hire people who don't get that feeling. Several months later, they come back to Gallup and say, hey, we got a problem with what you told us. Gallup says, what's that? They said, we can't find those people. You need to dig deeper. So they said, okay, give us a list of your top-performing salespeople for many years. We'll interview all of them. They did this survey, spent many, many hours on it, and they came back to the company and said, okay, this time we actually did figure it out.

When we talked to all your top-performing salespeople, they said different things, but there was one thing they all said in common, they all said it. They said, we're never making a cold call, walking office, knocking on a door, making a phone call to somebody we don't know. We get this pit in our stomach. Our palms get sweaty for fear of rejection. What if they don't like me? What if they don't like this product? What if I don't make any money and make the sale? But they all added, I envision what could be possible in their lives and mine if I make the sale and that possible future and that vision keeps me pushing through the pain. Isn't that interesting? I think that's true of us. I bet there's some people here who think you're the only Christian that when you bring up Jesus with somebody else, gets a pit in your stomach. I bet you think, oh, my campus pastor would never get nervous talking about Jesus. I bet Pastor Scott, he never gets intimidated or gets a pit in his stomach. No, we're all the same. We all feel inadequate, we all feel like we don't know the answers, we all feel, well, what if they know that thing I did and then they judge me? Every Christian feels the exact same.

The question is simply, are you willing to envision a better future once they accept full grace and full truth and submit to Jesus? See, being resilient doesn't mean you're the loud one, doesn't mean you're argumentative, doesn't mean you're trying to get attention. It simply means you're part of a mission and the vision of the possible future keeps you going no matter what. Now, here's the thing, when I read Acts 3 and 4, I love seeing Peter and John's resilience. Like, I learn a lot. My question is, and in fact, they even go on, they go back and meet with their other Christian brothers and sisters and they pray this prayer. Lord, look upon their threats and grant your servants that you get rid of the threat. That's not what it says. Grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness in spite of the threats that will come. This is a bold prayer. And when I read this, I thought, God, I need, we need to be like that. And I've seen what resilience is in Acts 3 and 4, but how do you get it? Like, what was going on in the lives of Peter and John that resulted in these kind of prayers, this kind of preaching, this kind of action? Because you don't just get in a hard situation and then drum up some boldness.

Drum up some strength. So what was going on right before Acts 3? Describes the church. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, that's God's word, and the fellowship, community, to the breaking of bread and prayers. And awe came upon every soul. Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. The Holy Spirit was powerful among them. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. Look at this generosity. They were selling their possessions and belongings, distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they're worshiping publicly and in small groups. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. They had joy, praising God, having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved, baptism. So catch what was going on before they needed their boldness. They were in the Bible. They were in community. They worshiped, they prayed, they were generous. They baptized people. In other words, they were just doing church. This is what I love about this scripture. The thing that prepared them for opposition

to put them in prison and threaten their lives was church. They're just doing church. They're just being the church. Here's the point. Resilient strength is formed in the church. In fact, I was looking at our website again this week and if you look at how to take a next step, it's pretty simple. It's like go to starting point, you'll know who we are. And then it's groups, serving, giving. You know where we got that? Acts chapter two. It's real simple. We encounter Jesus so we're ready once the storm comes. So here's one thing this means. When a campus pastor or any person at any thing stands up and says, hey, I challenge you to take a step of involvement in the life of this church called Southland, it's not for their benefit. It's not for Southland's benefit. Southland isn't gonna change next week if you serve or give. Like it's not for, I don't know if you like this phrase, the brand of Southland. The reason your leaders stand in front of you and say give more, serve more, bring more is because we want something for you, not from you. It's to build up a resilient strength because a strong, resilient church is gonna need that strength because a storm is coming.

Jesus promised it and we want to get you ready for it and that's why this church exists. You are in a war of good versus evil. And the enemy doesn't try to hide it anymore. We live in a negative world that views Christians as the problem so you need a resilient strength that doesn't break and that's why we believe Southland exists. Now if you don't know Jesus, I'd point you to verse 19 which is part of this sermon. Repent, turn back that your sins may be blotted out. Grace can be yours and it can be yours today but you cannot have this kind of resilient strength alone without God's spirit living inside you. And if you're a believer, I have to ask, are you in a group? Are you on a serving team? Are you giving? If so, and by saying if so, I mean are you all in on those environments? I'm gonna have a whole tangent on that on the podcast we'll release later this week. But your resilience will continue to grow. If not, it's time to take a step. And so we want you to text the word strength to 40411 if you need to take any step of getting involved here. And remember, Southland's gonna have a great fall kickoff whether you do this or not. We are. This is for you. This is to build a boldness in you

that is an ax level type of thing so when you face opposition in a negative world, you respond like Peter and John. Now I know some of you are disappointed in the application day. You're like, I got up early and came to church, canceled other plans just so I could hear the same old thing, I just need to get involved in church. Yeah, that's the answer today. But I'll tell you one more story that I think is a good parallel. In World War II, the B-17 was an essential weapon in the Allies arsenal. Some say that World War II would have been lost without this plane. But it was almost never mass produced. It was almost, at one point, the ruin of the entire Boeing Corporation because the first test flight of the B-17 crashed, killing all three aboard. And there was, of course, a big investigation as to what went wrong. The engineers were certain they had designed it right. The production folks were certain they had built it right. It turned out the pilots hadn't done a very basic task before takeoff. The captain had left the elevator lock on so the plane wouldn't respond to pitch control. The future of the Boeing Company hung in the balance. In some ways, the war.

So there were a bunch of intense meetings where they looked at every possibility. Could we get rid of some of the buttons in the cockpit? No, we need every button. Can we hire smarter pilots? No, we already have the best pilots in the world. Finally, after a lot of brainstorming, they came up with what at the time was a ground-breaking idea, something called a pre-flight checklist. It was a series of simple tasks that, if followed correctly with just one document, ensured the aircraft would be ready for takeoff. Now, I love that story, because if I'm on an airplane, I have, like, a baseline criteria. I just need it to not crash. Like, I would prefer to get to my destination, but as long as we don't crash, I'll figure it out, like, I'll be okay. And I imagine when they came up with this pre-flight checklist, there was some pushback from the pilots, because when you think about it, Air Force pilots are pretty sharp people. I imagine their thoughts when they first saw this pre-flight checklist, just follow this list for something like, who do you think I am? A first grader, like, oh, little Mikey needs his checklist to launch his plane. But the response was clear. If you want to accomplish a great mission, it starts by doing something small. Jesus said, in so many words, open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not. He said, a storm is coming. Aaron Wren calls it a negative world, you can call it what you want. But in this world, you will have trouble. You will have opposition to your faith. And God has so wisely realized what we need is a biblical strength and a biblical flexibility in order to navigate the unique circumstances that our culture has never before thrown at us as believers. So I plead with you.

Will you be a person who opens God's word every single day, asking to meet your creator there in the spirit to fill you with encouragement, comfort, and conviction? Will you be a person who serves regularly and joyfully? Will you be someone who the rest of your life is giving extravagantly and always looking to expand that generosity? Will you be someone who invites like crazy, who can't not say, come and see, because you've been with Jesus? Will you just live out, be in the church? So what they did in Acts 2, so when opposition came, they were ready. And I'm confident that if you do those things and give your all in the life of this healthy, standing on the Bible church, you will be ready when the storm comes and you will have that same resilience strength as Peter. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we want all that you have to offer. And God, maybe the most challenging verse in that whole scripture we looked at to me is when they prayed not for the thing that was bringing them hardship to go away, but they prayed for more boldness. And God, I confess, that's not how I pray. God, you and I both know, I pray the thing goes away. So God, I repent. God, may we be people who meet you in your word every day. May we be people who serve, give, connect authentically, worship without pride, and tell everybody, come and see. And Jesus, right now, I pray for the person who the storm happened this week, and even as they're sitting here, they are thinking, how do I respond, Jesus? Give them wisdom. Give them boldness. May they be strong in the name of Jesus. It is in his name that we pray, amen.