Category: Devotions

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.

Going bald

Acts 27:34 “Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head.”

How comforting! “No one will go bald during this tough time”! Experts say that anxiety can cause the loss of hair. If that is true then for the last several years my anxiety has been rising!

We all know that the storms of life can have effects upon our body, we understand this and so we try not to worry, which is often impossible especially if your ship is sinking.

What was Paul saying? He was using a Jewish expression (see also 2 Samuel 14:11; 1 Kings 1:52; Luke 21:18) which meant that you will live and that God will save you.

They had lost cargo, furniture, they had lost personal belongings, they had even lost the lifeboat but they would not lose their life.

How comforting indeed. We may lose everything in this world. I have sat with the poorest of the poor over the years. I have had the privilege of holding lepers, sitting with the scarred and listening to those who have been victims of war crime. I have been in hiding with those in fear of their lives and I have been with the hopeless where their demise is simply inevitable. It is a world far removed from many who think the level of their spirituality is based on how much stuff they have accumulated in their life which equals how much God has blessed them. Someone has to tell these believers they are deceived and that it is all rubbish in terms of the kingdom of God. They teach me nothing. They have nothing to say though they always seem to dictate the conversations. The broken storm-beaten believers in the forgotten world who have nothing to offer but their radiant smiles teach me that the one all-important truth of life, the one solid foundational purpose is that God saves and if their whole life is a storm and if they go down with the ship then He who promised them they will live will indeed cause them to rise into new life.

This is all that matters.

We don’t lose.

Even if some of us do go bald.

Before dawn

Acts 27:33 “Just before dawn Paul urged them all to eat. “For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything.”

Before anything else happens; the distractions of the day, the demanding voices, the ringing phones, the pinging of texts and the mountaineering of the emails.

Before you have to face life all over again; with the repetitiveness of yesterday, the humdrum of today and the unchanging story of your world.

Before the fear grips like a vice again; preventing you being what you are supposed to be or doing what you once had freedom to do.

Before it all; before the next moment, now, before the dawn, before it all begins again, you need to do that one thing. What is it? Is it to pray? Is it to plan? Is it to make that decision?

Don’t stumble into this day, don’t just let things happen. Take control of it, get there early, don’t press snooze and wake up in the middle of the chaos, demand the attention of the day. Stand up, be counted, state your case, make it happen.

 

The lifeboat is cut

Acts 27:32 “So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it drift away.”

The sailors had tried to escape the sinking ship by letting the lifeboat down trying to pretend they were letting the anchors down. Only Paul spotted them and he told the centurion and the soldiers reminding them that everyone needs to stay with the ship to be saved. The soldiers acted and by doing so …

They wasted no time: they didn’t untie the ropes, this wasn’t a tidy finish, they did what was necessary; there was no process, no planning. DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.

There was no way back: they were now committed to the ship; their security net was gone; they now moved into a psychological storm. THE BIGGEST BATTLE IS ALWAYS IN YOUR MIND.

Everyone became equal: prisoner, sailor, soldier all on the sinking ship, there were now no privileges for titles; there was nothing left for anyone to hatch another plot of escape. WHEN EVERTHING IS REDUCED TO ZERO IT MATTERS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE OR WHO YOU ARE BUT WHO YOU KNOW.