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/

Prayer is, perhaps, the most important element for those seeking a great awakening.  A lot of things happen when we spend time with God in prayer.  God has chosen that the mechanism of prayer to be his way of allowing us to participate in the ruling of his world.  God chooses to do something only when we pray and only when we pray according to his will.  This fact struck me some time back when I was doing a study in the Book of Revelation.  Notice what these verses say.

Revelation 8:1 When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
2 And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
3 Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne.
4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
5 Then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Rev 8:1-5 NASB)

The action of heaven stops for about an hour so that the angels could collect the prayers of the saints and add them to the smoke of the incense.  Then and only then did he cast it to the earth as an act of judgment.

If we do not pray, we do not hear God.  Even reading his Word will not penetrate our hearts if we do not practice the art of conversation with God.  We become like the fool of the book of Proverbs who refuses to listen to Wisdom:

22 “How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing And fools hate knowledge?
23 “Turn to my reproof, Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.
24 “Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention;
25 And you neglected all my counsel And did not want my reproof;
26 I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes,
27 When your dread comes like a storm And your calamity comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you.
28 “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently but they will not find me,
29 Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD.
30 “They would not accept my counsel, They spurned all my reproof.
31 “So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way And be satiated with their own devices.
32 “For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them.
33 “But he who listens to me shall live securely And will be at ease from the dread of evil.” (Pro 1:22-33 NASB)

God’s judgment on those who do not hear is to abandon them to themselves. Romans 1 confirms that this is the worst kind of judgment is this life.  But those who listen to God shall be secure.

How does one pray for revival?  One prays with brokenness and honesty.  We may not know how far from God we truly are until we make prayer for revival a regular part of our lives. Too often our prayer lives are just  slight glances at God with a few words that we really have not thought though.  When we finally become aware of our sin before God, it should shake us up.  And when we realize that God has not been listening to us because of our sin, then it should cause us to cry out for mercy.  There are several Psalms that serve as an example of when God stopped listening to the nation or to the one praying.  Psalm 51 is, of course, a Psalm of Contrition.  There David begs God to restore to him the joy of his salvation.  That sounds like revival to me.  Psalm 80 implores God to rescue his people.  But there is more than that.  He asks, “O LORD God of hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people?”  The people have so sinned that God was angry even with their prayers. All one can do is ask God to forgive us and move beyond this impasse.  And only God can remove the barrier.  The Psalmist is persistent in his prayer to God.

Psalm 80:1 For the choir director; set to El Shoshannim; Eduth. A Psalm of Asaph. Oh, give ear, Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock; You who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth!
2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Your power And come to save us!
3 O God, restore us And cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.
4 O LORD God of hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears, And You have made them to drink tears in large measure.
6 You make us an object of contention to our neighbors, And our enemies laugh among themselves.
7 O God of hosts, restore us And cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.
8 You removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground before it, And it took deep root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shadow, And the cedars of God with its boughs.
11 It was sending out its branches to the sea And its shoots to the River.
12 Why have You broken down its hedges, So that all who pass that way pick its fruit?
13 A boar from the forest eats it away And whatever moves in the field feeds on it.
14 O God of hosts, turn again now, we beseech You; Look down from heaven and see, and take care of this vine,
15 Even the shoot which Your right hand has planted, And on the son whom You have strengthened for Yourself.
16 It is burned with fire, it is cut down; They perish at the rebuke of Your countenance.
17 Let Your hand be upon the man of Your right hand, Upon the son of man whom You made strong for Yourself.
18 Then we shall not turn back from You; Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.
19 O LORD God of hosts, restore us; Cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved. (Psa 80:1-19 NASB)

Again this sounds like a request for revival, for a great awakening among the people.  If we want God’s face to shine on us, I think we too must become men and women of consistent prayer, asking, even begging if need be that God will cleanse us, make us holy and most of all, send a great revival upon us and upon the land.

I closing I recommend that the reader check these articles on prayer and revival.  The first is by the old Scotsman, Robert Murray M’Cheyne.  http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/01-4/1-4_mccheyne.pdf

The second article is by Roger Nicole  http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/01-3/1-3_nicole.pdf

The following are quotations on the meaning of Revival  from Iain H Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858

There are eras, said (Samuel) Davies, when only a large communication or outpouring of the Spirit can produce a public general reformation. Thus, preaching on “The Happy Effect of the Pouring Out of the Spirit” from Isaiah 32:13-19, he argued that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the great and only remedy for a ruined country– the only effectual preventative of national calamities and desolation and the only sure cause of a lasting and well-established peace. (p 21)

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In speaking of the meaning of revival it is also essential to note that what Davies and his brethren believed about revival was not something separate from, or additional to, their main beliefs; it was rather a necessary consequence.  Such is a man’s state in sin that he cannot be saved without the immediate results from it, the gifts of God.  Therefore, wherever conversions are multiplied, the cause is to be found not in men, nor in favorable conditions, but in the abundance of influences of th Spirit of God that alone make the testimony of the Church effective. No other explanation of revival is in harmony with the truths that are “the essence of the Christian scheme– the utter depravity of man, the sovereignly-free grace of Jehovah, the divinity of Christ, the atonement in his blood, regeneration, and sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

This school of preachers held that the Holy Spirit has appointed means to be used for the advancement of the gospel,  pre-eminently the teaching of the Word of God accompanied by earnest prayer.  Yet no human endeavors can ensure or guarantee results.  There is a sovereignty in all God’s actions.  He has never promised to bless in proportion to the activity of his people.  Revivals are not brought about by the fulfillment of “conditions” any more than the conversion of a single individual is secured by any series of human actions.  The special “seasons of mercy”  are determined in heaven.  Thus for a modern biographer of Davies to say what Blair “began a revival of religion in 1740″ is to assert the opposite of what they believed.  For the same reason it would have been obnoxious to these preachers to hear themselves described as “revivalists” . . .(p 22)

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. . . It can be further noted that what happens in revivals is not to be seen as something miraculously different from the regular experience of the church.  The difference lies in degree, not in kind.  In an “outpouring of the Spirit” spiritual influence is more widespread, convictions are deeper, and feelings more intense, but all this is only a heightening of normal Christianity.  True revivals are “extraordinary,” yet what is experienced at such times is not different in essence from the spiritual experience that belongs to Christians at other times.  It is the larger “earnest” of the same Spirit who abides with all who believe.

Thus Davies and his brethren repudiated the idea that revivals restore miraculous gifts to the churches.  They regarded revivals as more wonderful than that: The Spirit magnifies Christ, and the more abundantly his influence is possessed by the believers the more they will live for his praise.  When we meet with lives such as those of Davies, Whitefield (he had such a sense of the incomparable excellence of the person of Christ), Aaron Burr, Sr (a perpetual holocaust [a sacrifice consumed by fire] of adoration and praise, and many others in the revival period, we are tempted to suppose that theirs was a different Christianity.  It was not so but rather, as Thomas Murphy wrote, it was “the baptism of the Holy Ghost which caused the infant Church [in America] to become animated by the most fervent piety.”  The same writer said of these preachers: “they believed in refreshings from on high, felt some of them in their own souls, and were ready for still more . . . these bright and cultured souls were stirred to their very depths, and blessings untold were involved therein.  They awoke to a life not new in kind, but new in degree, and in all truth and soberness a new prospect opened before our Church and country.”

If revival is a larger giving to the church of grace already possessed– a heightening of the normal– then it follows that the evidences by which revivals are to be judged are the same as those which form the permanent evidences of real Christianity.  Foremost in the New Testament list is the evidence of love to God and men.  At all times to all true believers Christ “is precious.”   Preaching on those words, Davies said:

Because he loves him he longs for the full enjoyment of him . . . Because Christ is precious to him, his interests are so too, and he longs to see his kingdom flourish, and all men fired with his love.  Because he loves him, he loves his ordinances; loves to hear, because it is the word of Jesus; loves to pray, because it is maintaining intercourse with Jesus; loves to sit at his table, because it is a memorial of Jesus; and loves his people because they love Jesus.”

For revivals to be judged to be true we are to look for no greater proof than the increase of this same grace.  Love is not uniform in its strength but it knows many degrees.  Although it is an “active principle” in all Christians, love can also blaze and burn.  Men filled with the Spirit are filled with love (Eph. 3:16-19) and “the sacred fire of love” (to use Davies’ words) will affect al that they do.  They cannot be to others than fervent in spirit as well as dissatisfied with their own coldness. (p 23-24)

In Iain H. Murray’s book, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marrying of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858, describes the ministry of Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian pastor  who eventually became president of Princeton. “Davies was subscribing to the Pauline theology of the Reformation when he said that men

are estranged from God, and engaged in rebellion against him; and they love to continue so.  They will not submit, nor return to their duty and allegiance.  Hence there is need of a superior power to subdue their stubborn hearts, and sweetly constrain them to subjection; to inspire them with the love of God and an implacable detestation of all sin.  And for this purpose the Holy Spirit of God is sent into the world: for this purpose, he is at work, from age to age, upon the hearts of men. (p19)”

When one thinks of the need for a Great Awakening, you have to ask what kind of preaching are you doing and what kind of preaching describes the average contemporary pulpit.  Most likely it has quietly slipped away from the Pauline doctrine of original sin and separation of the sinner from God.  It most likely does not emphasize the offense of the sinner against the holiness of God, wrath of God against the sinner, or the radical nature of the God, of God’s love and to the extent he goes to overcome our sin on our behalf or the need for repentance and confession.

If there is ever to be another Great Awakening , we must examine our own preaching and even our own convictions. People cannot respond to what they do not hear.

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.

This is going to seem very minor and petty to some.  But I think it reflects a theological problem.  I have noticed that people use this phrase, “Jane is in love with Jesus,” or some similar phrase.  It bothers me because the preposition “in” is an import from our lost and dying culture. It is never found in Scripture.  In our world people fall in love and out of love everyday–sometimes the same person.  Being in love is about a feeling and feelings are fragile and easily damaged.  Is this how we really want to describe our relationship to God?

I much prefer for us to simply say, “Jane loves Jesus.”  It seems so slightly different but there is actually a chasm of meaning between the two.  Love, defined by Scripture, is something that is enduring and permanent.  Certainly one can grow in love but it is not something that ends.  Love is a disposition toward someone, not just our feelings about them. A disposition involves our whole being, it is at the core level of our values. No doubt, it is always good that our feelings line up with our disposition toward someone but sometimes they don’t. Some years ago, a man told me, “I love my son, but right now I don’t like him much.”  It was a turbulent time in the life of a teenage boy who was rebelling against his father.  Here the love of this father was unshaken even when emotionally he was not happy with his son.  Eventually as the boy grew up, matured, his father not only liked him again, he was very proud of him.  While his emotions moved from place to place, his love was always unshaken.

Real love does this kind of thing.  The pretend-love of today is that if I love someone, I must approve of everything they do.  So parents are permissive, schools are permissive, churches are permissive and so the average Christian is permissive.  This is not the kind of love that we find in Scripture.  While love is long suffering, it never gives in and calls good bad and bad good (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ).  The waiting father did just that, he waited for his son to return, he did not lower his standards and join his son in his sin (Luke 15:11-24).  Love calls for the best in each of us.  Real love as found is Scripture is best seen in the words, “Christ died for our sins.”  Love is an action, it is sacrificial and it puts the other person first. God never dumb downs his moral standards but his radical love for us lead him to become flesh, die for us, and rise from the grave.  He was not just in love with us, he loved us to the superlative degree.

My wife loves me deeply and I love my wife.  I know that because after 33 years of marriage she is still with me.  While I was younger, I was not too bad looking, but as I have aged, hair has sprouted from my ears, I am very overweight, I walk a little bit like a chimp, and I think I am shorter!  Yet, she still loves me.  If she was merely just in love with me, she would have left a long time ago because what she loved then is no more.  And that I think, it the fatal flaw for a Christian to use such language when we talk about loving God.  The world knows what it means to be in love but it is not too sure of what it means to love, particularly as God loves us and as we are trying to learn to love him.  While God does not change, our perceptions of him do.  We find that God permits us to suffer or allows bad things to happen to us and we are not so in love anymore.  We beg God for something and never get it, are we still in love now?

When we love God, we are involved in  a divine act.  As we are being transformed by Christ through his grace, and we learn to love. We learn to love the way God loves us.  We learn to love others with a divine love.  We learn to love with a love that cannot end, will not die, or never grow old.  We are all in the same category here.  We all must learn to love.  Though I believe we all love something or someone with real love because we are made in the image of God, even that love is distorted.  It is always, to some degree, selfish.  But when we become the subject of God’s love, we learn something entirely new.  Our Christian life becomes one long journey of love.

I hope I am not perceived as petty.  What I want is for people to draw from the rich well of the love of God and drink deeply.  Once we do, we are never just merely in love with Jesus, we deeply, directly love him.

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

Cheap grace is grace without a price, grace without cost.  The essence of grace, we suppose is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. . . . Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system.  it means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth. . . It means the justification of the sin without the sinner…. The world goes on in the same old way, and we are still sinners even in the best of life. . . Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolation of his grace!  That is what is meant by cheap grace, the grace that amounts to the justification of the sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs.  Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin.  Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (Cost of Discipleship, p. 45-47)