Author: missionspaul

You will get there!

Acts 27:44 “The rest were to get there on planks or on other pieces of the ship. In this way everyone reached land safely.”

In verse 24 Paul had said to everyone on board the ship that they would be saved.

In the end that is what happened, not because Paul had said it, but because God had decreed it.

Whatever God orders is what gets delivered.

We can be content today knowing He has planned and spoken into being our life, the ordaining of our days and it will come to pass just as He said.

You may not have thought you would have to end up grasping hold of planks of wood and parts of the ship but you are saved.

You may not have thought you could be saved if the ship broke up, but you were.

There are many parts of the circumstance of life that you never expected and you have many questions and fewer answers, but one day you will get to the shore and you will enter the fullness of His salvation for you will have arrived not in Malta but in your eternal home.

 

Friends in high places

Acts 27: 42 “But the centurion wanted to spare Paul’s life and kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land.”

Why did the centurion, Justin, want to spare Paul’s life? Paul was a Roman citizen. In the bedlam the soldiers thought it best to kill everyone but to kill Paul would have got the soldiers into a great deal of trouble with Caesar.

But why didn’t Justin just order the prisoners to be killed and Paul’s life to be spared?

It has to be because Paul had said that everyone would be saved and he had found favour with the Centurion.

Finding favour with man is a blessing from God.

Look around at how God has orchestrated your friendships, your contacts, who He has brought into your life for such a time as this. They are planted there for you and for others, for His plan in your life. Maybe we should embrace the people around us more for they could end up proving to be vital to our lives.

Common sense

Acts 27:42 “The soldiers planned to kill the prisoners to prevent any of them from swimming away and escaping”

Sometimes common sense isn’t wisdom.

If these prisoners escaped then according to the Roman law the soldiers guarding them would be responsible and would face the penalty that the prisoners should have faced and for some that would have been death.

Common sense said:

1. When given the chance all prisoners swim away to try and escape.
2. You are going to die anyway so you might as well die now.
3. I am not going to suffer whilst you live.

Just because a plan makes sense doesn’t make it the best plan. If wisdom comes from God then we need to ask Him for wisdom. Common sense comes from earth. Often it is good but sometimes it isn’t the wisdom we need.

Watch out for the sandbars!

Acts 27:41 “But the ship struck a sandbar and ran aground. The bow stuck fast and would not move, and the stern was broken to pieces by the pounding of the surf.”

Watch out for the sandbar, it is not what it looks like. It is not the beach.

It is between 2 stretches of water; the sea, then something that looks like a beach and then more sea.

Many coastguards will have stories of people having to be rescued on a sandbar and some even not being reached in time.

Don’t jump quickly to the conclusion, just because there is sand that doesn’t make it a beach. Not everything that you see and hear is what you think you see and hear.

Try not to be deceived it usually leads to a messy end.

It may look insecure but it will take you to security.

Acts 27:40 “Cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea and at the same time untied the ropes that held the rudders. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach.”

Cutting loose the anchors.

Leaving the anchors in the sea.

Untying ropes that held the rudders.

Getting the ship to move forward in this storm.

All of what they did sounds very insecure to me.

But in order to secure their future they moved into insecurity.

There are times when you have to take your foot off the bottom in order to swim.

You have to apply for the job to step into your new future.

You have to let go of the hold of a loved one to become all you can be.

You were created to move and perhaps today you have to step into insecurity to secure your life.

Blinded to what is dangerous and beautiful.

Acts 27:39 “When daylight came, they did not recognize the land, but they saw a bay with a sandy beach, where they decided to run the ship aground if they could.”

Last year I visited St Pauls bay in Malta, a beautiful place which hid its stormier past. You would not recognise it as the place where this storm and battered ship had gone aground on the beach.

Luke writes that they did not recognise it was Malta. They only saw land and headed for it.

The point is this:

Post storm it is sometimes hard to recognise and accept the difficulty what people have gone through.

But in the storm it is hard to recognise anything good that will come through this tough experience.

Blindness occurs in everyone at some point.

Give yourself a chance.

Acts 27:38 “When they had eaten as much as they wanted, they lightened the ship by throwing the grain into the sea.”

Give yourself a chance.

In a last ditch effort to get the ship to safety they throw the last remaining cargo, the grain, into the sea. They lightened the ship. This was their final struggle for survival.

Why give up now? Think and try something you haven’t done before.

Have you done everything? Seek wisdom, ideas, ask others for their thoughts on what you can do to give yourself a fighting chance to get through this season.

 

It is okay to count

Acts 27:37 “Altogether there were 276 of us on board.”

“You are just a number!”

“We are not playing the number game!”

“It’s not about numbers!”

These are the statements so familiar to me. Throughout my life I have heard them a lot.

When I started out as a Pastor I had a graph on my study wall with the attendances of people coming to the church. In the first few years I enjoyed seeing the graph grow upwards, then we levelled out and so I took it down!

But perhaps counting is really important?

John records (21:11) that Peter caught 153 fish.

Luke counts and records 276 people on the ship including himself.

Some try and work out what the numbers meant. Maybe they didn’t symbolise anything except someone counted.

How many people are on board with you?

Count them. How many are you responsible for? How many are following you?

How many are with you? How many can you rely on?

The reason for counting them is because you care.

It’s okay to count, it is more than okay. Maybe we should count more than we do. Maybe it is actually a true indicator of how things are.

So go on, count today.

 

 

Make today good

Acts 27:36 “They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves.”

Do you remember v20?

“When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.”

Then today we read in v 36, “They were all encouraged …”

How did v20 move into v36? It was because of Paul.

As followers of Christ we are called to change the atmosphere, the environment and the lives of people. Our presence, our words and actions should do this.

Even people on board a sinking ship can end up being encouraged.

Maybe today God can use you with those who have given up hope, perhaps you can stand amidst the crisis and give everyone something to believe in again. This is your moment.

The Bread

Acts 27:35 “After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat.”

This is not the ceremony of the Lord’s Supper, but the language is. Churches throughout the world celebrate regularly the Eucharist or Communion etc, but its true meaning is known when it is demonstrated before a watching world.

Paul had urged everyone one board to eat in order to save themselves from starving.

Death was all around them, the inevitable was only hours away and yet there was hope in a message that Paul was heralding that salvation would be experienced on this sinking ship.

He took some bread; John 6:35: “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
John 6:51: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Here is Christ, the body of Christ, the Church of Christ, the Christian. Often the focus is on whether it is stale or fresh. We go to great lengths for fresh bread. There are a variety of breads. We need to be modern, relevant, attractive and the pressure to perform, to be something unique, the best, better than all the rest is immense. And we forget the important aspects:

gave thanks to God in front of them all;  Matthew 26:26: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Luke 9:16: “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people.“  Luke 24:30: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.”

If I was Jesus at the Lords Supper facing the crucifixion my prayer would not have been one of thankfulness, but as I took the bread I would have been pleading for my life to be spared.

If I was Jesus at the feeding of the 5,000 my prayer would not have been one of thankfulness; but as I took the bread I would have been praying for miracles.

If I was Jesus at the home of the 2 disciples I had met on the Emmaus Road my prayer would not have been one of thankfulness but that these disciples would at long last recognise who I was.

Paul on board the ship of many faiths from many parts of the world gave thanks to the one true God.

The Church does prayers of petition very well, we long for miracles and we plead for the world to come to us. What we don’t do well is thankfulness. Churches are not known as cultures of thankfulness. Christians moan more than they thank. Maybe this is why we do not see all that we long to see? Maybe the reason for this is the most important aspect of all:

Then he broke it and began to eat. The cross represents the brokenness of Jesus. Christ was broken, the Church must be broken and the Christian must be broken. Healed and restored to be broken. Broken in the hands of God is different to being broken in the hands of the devil.  To be broken is to be teachable, changeable, humble, righteous but not self-righteous. To be broken is to surrender your all, risk the talk of the crowd, the slander of the ignorant. Brokenness brings more questions than answers. To be broken is to lose friends but gain His friendship. To be broken is to give up your rights and do what is right for Him. Hope only springs from brokenness. Miracles only flow from brokenness. Revelation only comes through brokenness.

This is not the ceremony of the Lord’s Supper, but the language is. The world needs to see less ceremony and hear more of its language demonstrated for Salvation is dependent on the bread.