The following is by a friend of mine who teaches, among other things, preaching at the Baptist College of Florida.  This is an example of what is called inductive preaching.  I think it has a great insight into the text

ACTS 27

This story of Paul’s shipwreck on the way to Rome is one of my favorite stories in the New Testament.  It is a favorite of mine because, like most favorite stories do, it leaves us with more of a picture than a plot.  Great stories paint great images for us to look at and think about and learn from.

And you might not immediately see the picture when you first read this story.  On the surface, this chapter seems to be simply an overly-detailed description of a sea voyage “gone bad.”  And knowing that this is the Book of Acts we are reading, you might even wonder why Luke would devote a whole chapter to this single event in the life of Paul.

Shipwrecks were actually commonplace in the first century.  When Paul wrote the Book of II Corinthians, he said he had already been in three shipwrecks!  So it hardly seems right to take up a whole chapter in the story of the early church (only 28 chapters long) with just this one story.

And Luke gives every single detail of the trip.  He tells where they left from, and when.  He tells which way the wind was blowing.  He talks about the time of year.  In v28, he tells how deep the water was.  And in v37 he makes sure we know exactly how many people were on board.

I think these all details were written to get us thinking about the rest of the details that surround this story.  If we can put ourselves into the story with these details, then maybe we can also understand the tremendous pressures that weighed on Paul as he took this journey to Rome to stand trial.

Here was a man who had no real home.  Since the day Jesus had spoken to him on the Damascus Road, he had given everything to the cause of the Gospel!  He traveled from place to place, telling people about Christ.

He worked hard to start churches in places where there were no churches, and now his reward is to be arrested…to be arrested and sentenced to the ultimate fate.  He must appear before the highest human court in the world–the court of the emperor of Rome.  And no one will stand with him when he gets there.  He is alone.  He has given all and lost all.

And if his troubles were not enough, now the ship that is taking him to his fate is sinking in a winter storm, even after he had told the captain of the ship that it was going to happen! This is the ultimate Murphy’s Law in action!  “If you are sailing to a Roman trial and near-certain death, your ship will also sink.”

So what does Paul do?  I know what I would have done.  Griping and whining would have been the order of the day!  “I told them this was going to happen, but does anybody ever listen to me?  NOOOOOO!”

But instead of griping, whining, or general discouragement, I see the incredible picture of Paul begins to emerge in verse 33…

• after 14 days of being blown off course,
• after fourteen days of being so seasick that they could not eat,
• after 14 days of being in a storm so bad that he couldn’t sleep (v33 says this happened just before dawn, “as the day was coming on”),
• after 14 days of pure misery, the Apostle Paul kneels on a cold deck, in the pouring rain, in the blowing wind, and gives thanks over a piece of soggy bread.  “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.  They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves.”

That is the image I want you to see and to keep.  And it is an amazing picture!  It is not “singing in the rain,” but “giving thanks in the rain.”  It is not just saying that everything is fine; it is knowing that things are not fine and giving thanks in faith.

Why would anyone do that?  Why would anyone give thanks for soggy bread in the middle of a storm?  Why would anyone give thanks when the situation seems hopeless?  The only answer is that Paul knew that things would only be hopeless if they DID NOT give thanks.

That really was Paul’s philosophy.  That really was what Paul believed:

• You live by giving thanks.  You stay strong by giving thanks.
• You survive by giving thanks.

It all explains the blanket statements that Paul made in the rest of the New Testament:

• In Eph 5:4, Paul tells the Christians to give up their old ways of foolishness and coarse jesting and put, of all things, thanksgiving in its place.
• In Eph 5:20, Paul says to give thanks at all times for all things.
• In Col 2:7, Paul says to overflow with thanksgiving.
• In I Thess 5:18, Paul writes those words that some of you have even memorized…”in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

These are all “BLANKET” STATEMENTS.  NONE of these verses ask what the circumstances are, and they should not.  That is the whole point:

• Giving thanks lives outside of circumstances.
• Giving thanks is what delivers us from being prisoners to circumstances.

That is why we are drug through this story detail by detail: because we are supposed to see Paul kneeling on the deck of a tossing ship and realize that thanksgiving is also our strength, our deliverance, from the storms, the discouragements of life.  Thanksgiving is our spiritual food.

Leadership Journal told the story of a woman who bought a parrot to keep her company, but she could not get the parrot to talk.  She returned the bird to the pet store and complained, “This bird doesn’t talk.”  The owner asked if the parrot had a mirror in its cage…”Parrots love mirrors, they can seem themselves and start a conversation with themselves.”  So the woman bought a mirror.

The next day she was back and complained that the parrot would still not talk.  The owner asked her if the parrot had a ladder in its cage.  “Parrots love ladders, and a happy parrot is a talking parrot.”  So the woman bought a ladder.

But the next day she was back again.  This time the owner asked if the parrot had a swing in his cage.  “Parrots love to swing.  Once he starts swinging, he’ll talk up a storm.”  So woman bought a swing.

She was back on the fourth day, but this time she came with sad news.  She told the owner, “my parrot died.”  The store owner was shocked and said, “Oh, I am sorry…did he ever talk before he died?”  “Yes,” the woman said, “just before he died, he looked up at me and said–’don’t they sell any food at that pet store?’”

The act of giving thanks is our spiritual food.  It takes us through the unbearable.  It allows us to bow before God in the worst of circumstances and come away with encouragement and confidence that God is with us and knows all about our situation.  We were never meant to live without gratitude.

Several years ago, a fine man named Lamar Breland died.  You don’t know his name, but I wanted to tell you about him.  He is one of those unsung church heroes.  He was one of our deacons, and a wonderful man.   He loved to fish.  He loved to tell stories.  You knew it was going to be a classic Lamar Breland story when he would say, “now here’s a sho-nuff true story!”  With Lamar, they were all “sho-nuff” true stories.  He loved to see friends and family.  He just loved to see folks.

But at the end of his life, he went through the mill.  It started with pneumonia.  And then for some reason, he got an awful case of TMJ.  Every time I saw him, he was just in agony.  And the pain from that would aggravate his heart problems.  And then finally, the cancer came.

One day at his house, after the doctors had told Lamar there was nothing else they could do, Lamar was sitting in his chair and he looked at me and said, “You know Ed, God has given me a wonderful life.”

And for just a moment, I could have sworn that I saw a man on a ship, kneeling in the rain, thanking God for soggy bread.  And it made me wonder if I had really yet tapped into the power God has placed in the simple act of giving thanks.

This particular video is about a fresh water project.  But can’t we see the possibilities if we enter into an Advent Conspiracy of many kinds, food, teaching, being a friend, sending gifts to those less fortunate than we?  What about the shoebox ministry or how about just asking your neighbor to church?  Wow, what a world we might create if we lived out the implications of our faith!

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

Recently on the Dave Ramsey Show, Dave interviewed the author, Marcus Buckingham, on his latest book, ‘Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest & Most Successful Women Do Differently. I thought that they were so interesting I would put them here on the Kudzu Vine. The first video is part one and the second one is part two.

Jessica Bryan’s CD will be out in mid July.  These are a few songs that have only been heard at Church once or twice.  Both Jessica and her husband, Dave, are very talented musicians and both hold the Master of Music degree.  Jessica has been writing music since high school.  Dave also writes and arranges music. I look forward to what God is going to do with the gifts he has given to both of them.

What Will It Take To Keep You From Jesus: I asked Jessica to find music to go with a sermon I preached, titled What Will It Take To Keep you From Jesus? She could not find a song, so, Saturday night before Church she wrote this one.

The Battle is a song about dealing with sin

For God So Loved the World, is Jessica’s take on John 3: 16

The Way EverLasting is the title cut from the CD

Jim Chester is a friend of mine.  It takes a lot of guts to admit that.  In this video Jim addresses a deep spiritual problem that is common among Baptists and other  denominations whose origins are in the rural south.

Please leave your complaints at http://www.jimchester.com/

The Church is full of hypocrites.  That is the accusation made today against the church.  It fact, it is supposed to be a major reason why people do not attend church.  But it is not a new one.  I know some think that they just discovered this truth.  But, as Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun.  There have always been hypocrites in church.

Now, there.  It has been said.  What next?  There are hypocrites in church, what are you going to do about it?  Well, not more that we already do.  Maybe we need to understand why there are hypocrites in church.

The word  hypocrite  comes from the Greek ὑποκριτής (hupokrites) which means to be an actor.  Merriam-Webster says that a hypocrite is “one who puts on the false virtue of religion.”  So strictly speaking, a hypocrite is one who pretends to have religion or be more specific, to be a Christian.

I think it is safe to say that there are some people who attend church who are pretending.  It is a sad thought but I believe there is quite a number of people who pretend to follow Christ and do not.  But this is a minority of people.  It is very similar to the rest of society.  You will always have someone pretending to be what he is not.

But the problem with church members is not that they are pretending to be something they are not.  The real problem, if you can call it a problem, is they are trying to be something new.  A Christian is a person who sinful nature is being changed and she is trying to be something different.  He or she is trying to go from the sinner that they are to being a person holy before God.  The theological term for this is sanctification.  It is true that when we are saved God declares us to be holy.  But a declaration is not the same as being holy.   We are being made holy.  We are becoming what God has declared us to be.  Salvation is an ongoing process.  It all does not happen at the moment of conversion.  For the first time in a person’s life, when we come to Christ we are able not to sin.  We are still able to sin but before coming to Christ, we were not able to not sin.  See the difference?  God enables the believer to say no to sin.  But we still fall to temptation from time to time because the old nature still has power over us.  But the moment we are redeemed, we can start on this journey to holiness.

I do not know why God chose to do it this way.  I would love to live a perfect life!  But each day of a Christian’s life should be one more step to Christ likeness.  Unfortunately, most of us take a step or two forward and then we go backwards.  However, this is nothing new.  Paul confessed the same problem in the book of Romans.  Romans 7:15 “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”  Most of us think of St Paul as someone special, just a little less than Jesus himself.  But Paul was a fallen man like the rest of us and he wrestled with his sin as we do.  Paul recognized that he too was a hypocrite, that is, he was not yet what he wanted to be.  He followed Jesus imperfectly. He asked who would set him free from this dilemma and his answer is Jesus himself.

In general, those who use the hypocrisy of Christians an excuse to stay out of church, really are not in the game.  They do not try be better.  They are not really interested in being holy.  In fact, most likely they are not followers of Christ at all and they have not taken the risk of laying their lives at the feet of Jesus and set out on the journey of the Christian life.

The Church is made up of people who are moving from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of God.  Because we are becoming something new, we will be hypocrites.  Those who are satisfied with the status of being lost and separated from God, of living in the darkness of their sin, and who have no future with Christ in eternity, will always use the hypocrisy of the church as an excuse for their lostness.  It is quite true, they are as good as any Christian by all human standards.  But it is not about being good.  It is about being made new in Christ.  Only those who are redeemed by Christ are being made holy by God.  We must understand that the Christian has nothing to offer God nor can he change him or herself.  But it is Christ at work in us that brings about the change.  We cooperate with God, we are called to work out our salvation but it is Christ himself who empowers us to change.  This is the difference between the lost and the saved; the saved have been filled with the Spirit of God who is at work changing us. The lost are still separated from Christ and they are true to their fallen nature.  The lost are singularly focused on their sinful nature and they have no interest in being like Jesus.

So, for those who cannot tolerate hypocrites, the church is not for them.  They will not be happy to be there unless they have a hobby of picking out the failures of Christians and making note of them.  But, they are lost and will be forever lost as long as they have such an allergy to hypocrisy.

But hopefully, one day they will come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and they will want to embark of this grand journey of hypocrisy.  It is a joyful journey because we slowly lose our old self which was as slave to sin.  And we are slowing putting on the character of Christ.  Personally, I think it worth being a hypocrite if it means becoming more like Jesus.

This started as a devotional I gave in our prayer time at the library where I worked while in seminary. Through the years it has gone through various changes. I have preached it as a sermon and have used it as a article. Today I had an experience that reminded me of the truth of this essay. I needed to revisit it. So, I thought I was post it as well

***************************************

All of us need to dream. I don’t mean those nocturnal visitations that roam our minds when we sleep. As important as those kinds of dreams are to our physical health, they are not the most important dreams. I think that the most important dreams take place in those moments of idleness, when our minds wander through our desires, accomplishments, and failures. In those brief moments standing by the window or staring at the ceiling, we remember where we have been and where we would like to be. We discover whatever has become our heart’s desires. There are dreams of what our children will grow up to be, or fears of what they might not be. Some dream of the ideal house or the kind of car that they want to drive. Most of all, we dream of what makes us happy and satisfied.

How do we know what will make us happy and satisfied? We dream about the past. Dreaming about the past frames the future for us. Christopher de Vink, in his book Only the Heart Knows How to Find Them, quotes Willa Cather, “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen” (p. xv). I will go farther than that; all of our future dreams are rooted in the soil of our childhood. Our childhood should produce for us a stubborn sense of place, a sense of belonging. Even those with bad childhoods can dream of what should have been.

I first became aware of this stubborn sense of place while I was a doctoral student in seminary. I had just lost my father in a farm accident and I was reminded of how much of a dreamer my father was. His dreams drove him to buy a farm and to move his family out of the city and back to the country, back to his home county and his roots. It was the perfect place for his sons to develop dreams of their own. Soon, I found that dreaming can be contagious. I became a dreamer. My dreams were a time of remembering and reminiscing. Dreams are a powerful moment in which we remember the past, but they are also an opportunity to discover the future. Those dreams were my mind’s attempts to answer the question, who am I?

I had a desk assigned to me on the second floor of the library at seminary. It was on the north wall over looking the chapel and the grounds around the chapel. Sometimes I would stop studying and look out the window at the birds and the squirrels in the trees and I would begin to dream. I would remember home. I would remember moments midmorning when you could hear a quail calling to its mate or a morning dove’s soft cry at dusk. Sometimes I would be reminded when the silence of a moonlit night was broken by the repeated wail of a whippoorwill.

I would even dream of those cold, crisp mornings when I would be awakened by my mother to go feed the cows. I would put on my clothes and boots and go outside. The ground would be hard and glazed over with frost. You could stop and listen in the twilight of the morning, it would be so silent. As I stood there in the quietness, I had a sense of belonging. Soon the silence would be broken by the crunching sounds of the cows making their way over the frosted fields looking for the bale of hay and the bucket of corn that I was about to give them.

I would dream of people that I love, of familiar sights and smells. I would smell my father’s Old Spice, supper cooking on the stove, and even the smell of the pasture as a light breeze would stir in the late evening. I dreamed, I dreamed of a time when life seemed less complex and more real. And if the truth be known, I sometimes dreamed of going back home.

But the strangest thing happens when I go home; it doesn’t satisfy, it doesn’t fill the longing of my heart. It’s like a drink from a cool spring but afterward you thirst again. You might call it a stubborn sense of place, but I really think it is a stubborn sense of call.

I have decided that these day dreams are special; I think they are gifts from God! They are guide posts, hints, suggestions, they are “rumors” of a far off country. It really is a stubborn sense of call to a future place, a future time. It is not just a wish dream, but a mystical moment when God gives us a hint of our own proper place.

The writer of the book of Hebrews knew of such dreams. He talked about some of the heros of the faith, and in particular Abraham and his family. God had given Abraham a dream. He would make of him a great nation and would give him the land to do it. And based on just that promise, Abraham left his home in Babylon, in Ur and followed the Lord. It was a very long journey and it required a lot of faith. It was not a perfect faith. If you go back and look at the life of Abraham you will see that it was not perfect, but he was faithful. All he had was a promise and his memories.

I imagine that Abraham thought of home, not to go back there, but because it was the only thing he had in his experience on which he could imagine the future. That’s the way we are. We only have our past and it is in terms of the best of those times that we think about the future. How else can we think of heaven except in terms of the past? My dad always thought that heaven was going to be acres and acres of green rolling hills where he would ride his favorite horse and herd a bunch of white-faced Herefords. It is in those moments of dreams that, remembering the past, we get a sense of the future.

God has promised us a future and he is waiting for us. Notice what the writer of Hebrews said about the heros of the faith; they were seeking a dream of their own. There was a better country. They had a strong sense of place that was calling them to another time. They sensed that they were aliens and strangers in this world. Oh, they enjoyed life even if they did not quite fit in. But, for those who followed God and for those of us in Christ, the specter of death is really a promise of a better country. Sometimes our very best memories are just tiny windows to the future.

In the mean time God has called us to live out our life before him and there is no reason not to enjoy it. In fact because our future is secure, we can enjoy the present even more. We know that a wonderful inheritance awaits us.

Until that day, we are called to be faithful. Look what the writer of Hebrews said about the faithful ones in verse 16, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.” It is a wonderful thought that God is not ashamed to be called our God. When we are faithful to him I think that it is not inaccurate to say that God is proud of us, like any father is proud of his child. Notice that he has prepared a city, a dwelling place for us. That is his promise to us, a place where we can dwell with him forever. Our stubborn sense of place is not in the past after all.

The next time you begin to slip away to some far away or forgotten place, listen carefully, God is near. He may be sharing with you a sign post, a hint, a stubborn sense of call to a truly wonderful place.

Several years ago, our church declared a month long celebration of creativity. We called it Christ and Creativity month. I had remembered reading Edith Schaeffer’s comment that because of our position in Christ, Christians should creative because we want to imitate God. She talked about doing simple things like arranging flowers and simple decorations in one’s home. Following that pattern, we invited church members to bring examples of their creativity. There were all kinds of examples ranging from woodwork, to sowing, to photography.

I hope The Kudzu Vine Cafe can be something like our Christ and Creativity month. I originally wanted to do something for my daughter, Jessica Bryan, so that we could allow her music to be heard on the internet. But I thought, why stop there? In our church we have several talented people. Why not a place where they can share their abilities? And why stop with music, some may want to write stories or display photography or other art forms. Only time will tell if that can be done.