PRAYER
You are the air I breathe, the song I sing, and the love that fills my heart. In the stillness and quiet, I reach out for You, seeking to embrace the fullness of Your divine presence.
As I call upon Your name, I can feel the comfort and peace that comes from being in Your presence. You are my sanctuary, my place of refuge, my solace in times of turmoil. It’s in Your presence that I find joy, peace, and strength beyond measure. Amen.
SERMON
Point: We find God in unexpected
Acts 15:36–41 NRSV
Sometime later, Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.
Acts 17:22–34 NRSV
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way, you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man, he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
the unknown god: it’s Jesus.
Acts 17:28 - ‘For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Point: All
In him, we live and move and have our being….
The question isn’t: How can I introduce the presence of God into your life?
The question becomes: How can you recognize the presence of God already in your life?
POINT: We develop the
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle
“But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome…Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling in my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. After that, he said not much but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in…”
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”
Jesus is there the whole time. You’re so close; you just didn’t have the name for it. So I’m giving you the name…Jesus.
How can you recognize the presence of God already in your life?