Sunday Reflections
Faithfully, the Lord gave us another day of corporate Christian worship and fellowship!
After a month away from my two oldest boys, Kai & Kaden, we were reunited this past weekend. The gang is back together! The baby, Karter, was elated to have his two brothers back on board. For the past few years, our boys have spent the month of July in Corpus Christi with my Mom & Dad. The break has always proved to be refreshing and much-needed. I’m glad to have them back!
I went to bed Saturday night/early Sunday morning, settled to go in a different direction than my preparation yielded the week prior. For most of the week, I had been studying through Acts chapter 1, with the intention of starting a series through the Book of Acts. Finally, on Saturday night, I determined to simply go with something else I had previously prepared that I hadn’t had the opportunity to preach. I try my best to prepare 1 or 2 additional messages a month, in hopes of building a library of new sermons in situations like this. Therefore, I literally had 15 or so sermons on my device, ready to preach; and I had narrowed it down to the one that seemed to stand up, asking to be preached!
But on Sunday morning, I just could not get the Book of Acts out of my heart. I had to preach it or die! I spent the morning simply praying and thinking through how to communicate all that I had studied. For me, it is always best for me to write out my sermons, from start to finish. But in this case, I had to pull notes from here and there and just sort of bring them all together, and pray that the Holy Spirit would sort through all of the notes, scribbles and various highlights from my studies on the introduction and first few verses of Acts. The downside is that the length of my sermon turned out to be about 50 minutes. I suppose the personal comfort for me is in the fact that most of my introductions to a book are longer, because there is just so much information I feel needs to be shared to lay the groundwork for the entire book. The upside, I think, is that the Lord saw me through and did not let the message flop. I personally know that it could have been much more effective in it’s presentation and format; but I think it went well enough to do the introduction of Acts justice. Here is a brief outline of the sermon….
Subject: Debilitating the Power of Complacency
Text: Acts 1:1-8
I. IF WE ARE GOING TO DEBILITATE THE POWER OF STAGNATION, THERE MUST BE DIVINE PLACEMENT (vs. 1)
II. IF WE ARE GOING TO DEBILITATE THE POWER OF STAGNATION, THERE MUST BE DELIBERATE PREPARATION (vs. 2)
III. IF WE ARE GOING TO DEBILITATE THE POWER OF STAGNATION, WE MUST PRACTICE HIS PRESENCE (vss. 3-7)
IV. IF WE ARE GOING TO DEBILITATE THE POWER OF STAGNATION, WE MUST REST IN HIS PROMISE (vs. 8)
a. A people who are committed to follow Christ’s Commission (Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:8)
b. A people who resolve to finish the work Christ has started in you. (vss. 9-11)
c. A people who are committed to giving life to dead situations. “presented Himself Alive”
d. A people who impact lives in undeniable ways “Infallible proofs”
Kraig Lowell Pullam 