By REV. TIMOTHY L. MELTON, PASTOR
(Transcribed by Myra D. Colgate)
Cherokee Pentecostal Holiness Church
Read Acts 16:16-34
Paul and Silas are walking the land. They’re doing the work that they were called to do, watching over the flock and planting churches. They were also setting demon possessed people free. That’s what actually gets them into trouble.
Like them, have you also figured out you can be serving the Lord and still get into trouble? Yes, and not everything is ‘peachy keen’ all the time. However, I can tell you, as I said earlier, the one thing in my life that I’ve found out does work is my relationship with the Lord.
Paul and Silas are walking down the road on their way to church, minding their own business and they’re interrupted by a demon possessed girl. Now, you do realize when one sets their mind to go and serve the Lord, that’s when the enemy will fight you the most. In fact, I learned a long time ago, that just because I’ve hung a plaque on my wall reading, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” things didn’t get better. They got a little bit worse.
However, I can tell you of a surety and a truth. It didn’t stay that way very long, and those devils were defeated, and I became victorious. I also have learned I can walk away with more than what I had when I went into the battle. Why? It’s because I serve a God who knows how to take bad things and do good things with them.
Somebody asks, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Its so God can turn it into good for good people.
As we see, this individual is chasing down Paul and Silas while crying out after them until finally Paul has had enough. He turns around and casts that demon out of her. As the demon did leave her, the ones who were profiting from her actions and words, saw they had visibly lost their means of support, so they charged Paul and Silas with a crime and brought them to the magistrate. Saying of them, “These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe being Romans. The multitude rose up together against them and the magistrates ripped off their clothes and commenced to beat them. When they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely. (In other words, see they don’t get away.). Upon having received such a charge, the jailer thrust them into the inner prison and made their hands and feet fastened in the stocks.
Yes, and now it would seem like ‘the party’ was over and it would even seem like Jesus had let them down. It would seem like that after everything had been broken down around them. It looks like it’s over for them, and here they were doing just what they were called to do. They found themselves beaten, thrown into prison, locked up hands and feet and they ought to just give it up. And there’s a time when one just gives up and quits, right?
But not if one has been touched by the real thing. In Verse 25 it says, “and at midnight, Paul and Silas began to pray and sing praises unto God and the other prisoners heard them.
I want us to realize that when there’s something real on the inside of a person, nothing is over yet. The circumstance that would knock it out of a person only knocks it deeper into them. (Oh how I wish I had somebody to help me!). When I get hit, it doesn’t knock it out of me, it knocks it deeper in.
“And suddenly—there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were loosed” Acts 16:26. Hallelujah! Meaning that everyone began to worship the Lord. God took the place they were in, broke the lines (chains) that held them. Caused the prisoners to hear, and when they did, what they thought was going to stop a revival, caused a revival! Somebody needs to understand there is a God in Heaven Who is able to turn your thing around and make it good, whatever the enemy meant for evil.
I’ve got good news for you. You’re not reading this for just any reason. God kept you reading this because you have a purpose in your life, Hallelujah! Glory to God! I have had many different things happen to me over my life. I couldn’t help it. This was bubbling up, a little bit here and there, but I want everybody to know what God has done…
To be continued…
