1. Too many people live with a feeling of fatalistic pessimism that adversely affects their thinking, emotions and behavior.
The Lord has a way of turning around the most difficult situations for our good. Pessimists think their
circumstances are the worst possible because they believe that the bad usually is weightier than the good. Fatalists think that their bad situation is the way it is going to be forever and nothing is going to change it. Most think things are going to get worse.
circumstances are the worst possible because they believe that the bad usually is weightier than the good. Fatalists think that their bad situation is the way it is going to be forever and nothing is going to change it. Most think things are going to get worse.
However, in this passage we see one example of how the Lord wants us to believe that He can turn around the most desperate situation for the good of every obedient believer.
Application: Ask God to help you to be more optimistic while believing He will somehow turn things around with His sovereign power for what is best. Ask God to help you out of your ruts of unbelief.
2. The apostles might have had human reasons to feel pessimistic, but they pressed ahead for Christ as purposes. The church experienced terrible persecution with no legal, health or economic protection to shelter them from disaster.
Many people put in that situation would quickly become pessimistic or fatalistically resigned to defeat not the apostles.
Application: Ask the Lord to teach you how to rejoice even in sorrowful conditions. God promises to turn all things around for good - in all conditions.
3. The apostles were in intimate relations with the Lord Jesus who had turned around the worst situations for good. When we know Jesus Christ and are in an abiding relationship with Him we will remain confident in His promise to do remarkable things with His irrepressible Spirit
Application: Ask the Lord to help you to stay in such close communion with Jesus that you can remember His overcoming example.
4. The apostles had witnessed how God had turned around Saul of Tarsus as one of Christ as greatest advocates. Remember how the Lord turned around many great people throughout church history to demonstrate His creative transformations.
Trust the Lord to help you to follow the faith, teaching and example of those who have experienced a great turn around in their lives and ministries.
Application: Thank God for all the ways He has turned around bad things into good even in your own experiences. God is in the business of turning people from the worst to first like the apostle Paul.
Zephaniah 3:9-20
Zephaniah 3:9-20
SERMON CENTRAL
CONTRIBUTED BY PAUL FRITZ October 2000
