As Paul and Silas continue on the second missionary journey, Acts 16 tells the story of 5 conversions, the kind of thing Jonathan Edwards would later call the “surprising work of God”. Join Pastor Jim for this study of the amazing offer of the Gospel and the wide variety of ways God draws people to faith in Christ.
Sermon Notes
- Timothy
- Luke
- Lydia
- Demon-possessed slave-girl
- Philippian jailer
5 surprising conversions (Edwards)
5 diverse conversions
5 lives transformed by the power of God
1. The power of prayer
“We have learned that prayer is both an instinct and a spiritual gift. As an instinct, prayer is a response to our innate but fragmentary knowledge of God. It is like a note in a bottle to ‘whatever gods there be’. As a gift of the Spirit, however, prayer becomes the continuation of a conversation God has started.”
Tim Keller
Prayer
“Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of Him that we are capable of in this life.”
William Law
2. The freedom of worship
“Praise is not a food we provide for God, it is the bread of God that nourishes us — it is the liberation of our souls.”
Calvin Miller
Into the Depths of God
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.”
C. S. Lewis
Reflections on the Psalms
3. The gift of salvation
“The secular university is scandalized by the claims of revelation. Those who have, for whatever historical reasons, become seekerson-principle, cannot tolerate the allegation that truth is a gift. To have to receive offends those who have determined to take.”
Dr. Louis Mackey
“And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
1 John 5:11-13