What To Do When It Feels Like There's Nothing You Can Do – Andy Wooldridge | HTB Live Stream

well good morning everyone today i'd like to speak to you about what to do when it feels like there's nothing you can do if you'd like to turn in your bibles or look up to the screen we're going to read from acts 16. it says after they had been severely flogged that is paul and silas they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully when he received these orders he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks about midnight paul and silas were praying and singing hymns to god and the other prisoners were listening to them and suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken at once all the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose the jailer called for light rushed in and fell trembling before paul and silas he then brought them out and asked sirs what must i do to be saved and they replied believe in the lord jesus and you will be saved you and your household the jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in god he and his whole household a few months ago i sat in the dentist chair does anybody actually enjoy going to the dentist i'm so sorry if you are a dentist i'm so sorry if you're at home online at a dentist no offense i'm so sorry i don't enjoy the dentist too much and i was sat there and i've got the nicest dentist in the world honestly she's lovely but i sat down and she said andy we're now going to prepare your mouth for two crowns and now i'd never had a crown before so i had no idea what to anticipate in this moment no idea i ended up sitting there for the next 55 minutes my mouth as wide as it could possibly be in absolute agony it scared me because she just keep pulling these different weapons out she'd be injecting me on numerous different occasions and my mouth was just being ragged around everywhere it got to the point of panic when i started to smell burning and then smoke started billowing out of my mouth the only thing i could possibly do was pray god get me out of here i feel entirely helpless in this moment i was pretty helpless but probably not quite as dramatic as paul and silas whilst they were in jail you see they'd been beaten up badly they were thrown into what was a an underground dungeon their hands and legs were stretched out and they were chained down and they were under guard 24 7. this was pretty much as helpless as you could possibly be i wonder what do you do when you feel like there's nothing you can do maybe you found yourself in a season of or just feeling like you're at a dead end or feeling frustrated because you're hitting wall after wall after wall and nothing seems to be making any progress maybe it's at work and you're not seeing the progress that you want to maybe it's in a relationship and you've been disappointed because it's it's just hit a roadblock or maybe it's wider a field maybe you've got a friend and the challenge that they're facing just seems enormous and you've got no answers for them or perhaps you look around this city or around this world and and it's easy to feel helpless you see the wars and the poverty you see climate change and you think what can i actually do about this what do you do when you feel like there's nothing you can do these moments in life hit us they hit us when we realized actually that this gimmick isn't going to work for me right now this self-help book isn't going to do the job the latest fad or the latest app probably isn't going to make the difference i need no human help is enough i need a miracle i need a heavenly breakthrough i need a divine intervention i need the supernatural to come down into this natural world and to make the difference because i don't know any other way but it's tough sometimes isn't it i wish it was as easy as simply don't stop believing hold on to that feeling come on some of you are jumping back to 1981 with me right now aren't you you're putting your leopard leotard on and don't stop believing come on sing with me hold on to that ah guys i didn't know how that was going to go down to be honest but we'll maybe work on it later but it's not always that easy is it life can be really tough it can feel paralyzing at times what do we do when we feel like there's nothing we can do i think this passage in acts 16 with paul and silas teach us a couple of things the first one is this keep praying it says in verse 26 after paul and silas had prayed there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken when i was two my dad was rushed into hospital it was unsure for some weeks whether he was going to make it or not my mum describes his his feet and his ankles as being yellow his legs as being blue and his upper body as being green now even in the 80s that's not a good look to go for but they just didn't know what it was they were helpless in so many ways and so my mom did the only thing that she knew to do and she prayed and she asked the church to pray and she asked all her friends and family to pray but there was no immediate change so they kept persisting they kept praying six months later it was a hard long six months but he'd slowly made some progress and was was able to be released from hospital but they told him you'll be on medication for the rest of your life and you'll carry around a draining bag with you that next day after he was released those friends from church came over they laid a hand on his shoulder and they prayed again for him and my dad says he felt something move inside of him but but he he was kind of a casual church attender he never really thought about faith outside of the hour on a sunday and no way for a moment did he think that he'd been healed well not until the next morning he woke up and his draining bag was completely empty they rushed to the hospital and and the hospital checked him over did all the tests they could possibly find to do and the doctors literally said to him we think this might have been a miracle because there's no explanation praise god [Applause] see the power of persistent prayer is remarkable and yet i wonder today whether actually that might not have been the most powerful moment in this experience you see because throughout that six months my mum was praying and she was relying and trusting god like she had never done before and and something shifted in those six months where the spiritual temperature of her life the spiritual atmosphere of her life changed it lifted her faith raised and in doing so our whole family and our future changed forever you see my mum was praying for for god to heal my dad but god was doing a much deeper foundational work to change the spiritual atmosphere of our family and of our future again verse 26 says after paul and silas prayed there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken see prayer shakes the foundations of our lives it shakes the foundations of our families and our and our homes our our neighborhoods our our schools and our workplaces of this city as a whole persistent prayer has that kind of power but it's hard sometimes isn't it because foundations are unseen and we we love to see the immediate effects of our prayer if if i was in that prison instead of paul and silas and maybe they were i would have simply been praying for an easy release god just let me escape from this prison really easily really quickly but god was doing a foundational work god was doing a foundational work that that those prison would shake and not just his paul and silas's chains would fall off but all of the chains would fall off not just their prison door would open but all the prison doors would open god had to shake the foundations that the jailer would wake up would encounter jesus's love and power and never be the same again see sometimes our prayers are just a little bit too small because we get sucked into just our immediate need when god is doing a foundational work within us i'm so excited that we are building the hdb prayer room at the moment directly under our feet in this building prayer and worship as the foundation of all that we do in life because there's so much power in prayer but it's hard sometimes isn't it i find prayer hard sometimes i really like the idea of microwave prayers you know those prayers that you kind of you put them in you can see it spinning around the immediate effect you even got a timer so you know how long you're waiting but god seems to like the slow cooker quite often and it's in those moments of waiting and needing to persist in prayer that we really recognize our need for one another see paul and silas prayed together in the prison and there's something powerful about praying together to encourage and to build each other up to to allow our faith to spark off one another i've i've found tuesday mornings are one of the most life-giving moments in my week many others across the church across the sites and services even across the world online as well we meet online at 8am for kc 8am we meet to pray and to worship and to believe for god to shake the foundations of our church and of our city and of our world to do a deep work and we encourage and we build each other up there's something powerful about praying together because as we pray together we stand in unity and god commands a blessing where there is unity i've heard of groups over the the last few years htb groups who have have done the 1102 campaign together they've committed to to text each other around 11 o'clock to remind each other to pray to to declare what god is doing and what they're believing to happen there's something powerful about praying in unity see we might just think that god is an answer in our prayers but he's doing a much deeper work what to do when you feel like there's nothing you can do keep praying because god is working on the foundations and number two keep praising number one keep praying number two keep praising on rachel and my honeymoon we um we hired motorbikes now i'd never ridden a motorbike in my life i'd never ridden a board to be honest either so why we thought this was a good idea i have no idea um it was very cheap suspiciously cheap i'm thinking now it's probably illegal if i'm honest but we drove around and we had a really nice time slightly nervous but nice time until the police pulled us over now this was somewhat shocking and i was pretty convinced that they were going to throw us into jail in that moment i remember panicking and praying a lot of panic prayers i remember praying god help me god help me please please god help me but i don't remember praising much in that situation i didn't find myself overflowing with thanksgiving and worship remarkably in acts 16 paul and silas do exactly that you see they're stuck in prison but they start to praise see praise in the prison of our lives is truly powerful that jailer who who was saved in that moment because the earth shook and because he encountered something of the power and the love of god that jailer was one of the first christians in philippi became one of the first church leaders in that city that church was to go and to impact the entire world you don't know what difference your praise in your prison experiences of life might just make there's power as we praise him john mark mcmillan went to church regularly with one of his best friends stephen within their their young years i think they were early twenties stephen tragically died in an accident and the whole church was was shaken up their friends and their family wrestled with god discouraged frustrated confused questioning and john mark macmillan in the middle of that distress found himself self writing words that many of us have sung before oh he loves us oh how he loves us oh how he loves us oh how he loves he didn't necessarily feel that love when he looked round his circumstances but in the middle of the mystery not understanding all that was going on he knew deep in his heart that god was good that he was loving that he was worthy of praise that that jesus sat enthroned that he continued to be good all the time and that song has gone around the world literally millions and millions of people have sung it and experienced the presence and the peace of god see there's such power as we praise even in the prison experiences of our lives i think john mark macmillan and paul and silas knew something powerful about praise they knew that to to praise god was was not to ignore our circumstances but it was to acknowledge the presence and power of god within and above our circumstances i think they knew that to to praise god is is not to deny the challenges we face but to defy them by declaring that god is higher and stronger and greater and that his love is more powerful and more faithful there's something powerful that goes on within us our perspective is shifted as we praise god we're lifted into his presence and we see from god's viewpoint and there's an atmosphere change that takes place psalm 100 tells us that with praise and with thanksgiving we enter into god's cause and an atmosphere change happens an atmosphere change happens where we see things differently where our perspective is renewed where the heavy burdens on our shoulders are somewhat lifted where we can experience a joy and a peace that transcends all understanding and makes no sense in so many ways and yet this is the power and the beauty of god's presence see as we praise we're propelled into god's presence as we praise we're propelled into god's presence and not just in this building wherever we find ourselves for you at home at the moment or wherever you're watching this praise propels you into god's presence as you're at work and as you're at home as you're walking your neighborhoods throughout this city praise propels us into god's presence and changes the atmosphere lifts off burdens lifts off weights and brings the peace and the life of god see god's presence has that kind of power but it's not just for you and me it's not just for you and me to experience here or wherever we are in life you see because the prisoners alongside paul and silas it says they listened intently to paul and silas praising now if i'm honest i think if somebody was to start singing at midnight in most prisons the reaction wouldn't be for the other prisoners to listen intently but i think an atmosphere change happened in that moment some of the burdens and the weights that those other prisoners were carrying lifted off their shoulders because praise doesn't just change the atmosphere of our own life but of our surroundings as well there's such power in our praise and this is our passion as a church that we wouldn't just experience the fullness of life and the power of god's presence in this moment but that everywhere we go we would be carriers of the presence of god that our work colleagues our friends our family and this whole city would encounter the presence of god there would be an atmosphere change people would find jesus and experience transformation because praise propels us into the presence of god so when you feel like there's nothing you can do keep praising because praise propels you into the presence of god and changes the atmosphere of our lives and of our surroundings can we stand to our feet [Applause] we're gonna we're gonna praise in a moment but if i'm honest i don't think paul and silas here were were praising in order to get something from god i think they were praising because they knew what god had already done this passage describes it it being midnight as they sung and prayed it being midnight as the the the foundations were shaken and the chains fell off and everyone's prison doors flung open and midnight is a fascinating moment it's a moment of transition from one day to the next but it's still pretty dark outside see 1201 am doesn't feel or look very different to 11 59 pm the day before it's probably just as dark that the clouds probably haven't shifted very much and the daylight still feels a long way away but a transition has happened a new day has come [Music] and that's why i think paul and silas could praise because when jesus died on that cross and when he was resurrected again a transition took place from 11 59 over into a new day the trajectory not just of our lives but of the whole of creation shifted to from death towards resurrection life a new day kicked into being in that moment and we get to live in it now and yes it might still feel dark outside yes you might have unanswered prayers yes you might be questioning and wondering what god is doing but he is working on the foundations of your life he is at work whether you see it or not so you can keep praying and you can keep praising because he is worthy and he is enthroned on high and praise will propel you into his presence this is our god seated high upon the throne forever glorified so jesus with every bit of strength we've got now we honor you jesus with every bit of faith we have now we praise you and we declare that you are good and that you are loving and that you sit and thrown on high so all glory be to you all worship and praise be to your name jesus the one who shakes the foundations you

Channel: HTB Church

Views: 1,312

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Keywords: Church online, HTB, Faith, Prayer, Hope, Positivity, Good News, Preaching, Bible, Worship

Id: 87gX6xh159s

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021