Are you good at guessing people’s ages? Could you tell the difference between a forty year old man and someone in his fifties? What about picking out who’s the mother and who’s the daughter when one is 37 and the other is 56?

Children—do they sometimes stump you? “You mean to tell me Miss that you’re only fourteen? I would have said you were at least sixteen or seventeen!”

I’m asking because I’m having a little difficulty figuring out how old the person is who’s referred to four times in today’s text as a “young man.” I’m thinking he’s somewhere between twelve and fourteen, probably the latter, but I could be wrong.

The passage I’m looking at is Acts chapter 23. To set the scene, Paul is in prison in Jerusalem. At the start of the chapter he has more or less stirred up a religious hornet’s nest in the Sanhedrin, the Jewish body of supreme authority.

Verse 12: The next morning the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. More than forty men were involved in this plot.

That’s a lot. A strong man might fend off two or three attackers, but over forty? No way!

Verse 14: They went to the chief priests and elders and said “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”

Now the plot thickens. Enter the young man of a yet to be determined age.

Verse 16: But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.

So, would you believe it’s Paul’s nephew who’s overheard what’s been planned?

Verse 17: Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him.” So he took him to the commander.

The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”

The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”

This sounds to me as though this “young man” is not fully grown yet. You don’t take an eighteen year old by the hand, draw him aside and ask, “What is it you want to tell me?” So I’m guessing he’s maybe 12, or more likely 14. A military commander could reach out and take the hand of a lad that age, draw him aside and ask him his question.

Verse 20: He said, “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him. Don’t give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.”

The commander dismissed the young man and cautioned him, “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”

I’m continuing my blog posts about going on a God Hunt—learning to look for God in your everyday worlds. I trust, as you have read these blog posts, many of you were made more conscious of God’s activity in your lives, at least more so than what you would normally observe. More particularly, I hope you noted some obvious answers to prayer. Your God Hunt Diary—any notebook in which you keep track of your “God Hunt Sightings”—may not be jammed with “sightings” yet, but you should have at least an entry or two recorded.

In the next blog post in this series, I’ll talk more about the text from Acts 23 that I introduced in today’s post.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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I’ve posted several blog posts on the subject of the God Hunt. Last post, I suggested that you set aside time at the end of your day to review the ways in which you observed God at work in your everyday world.

Quite often in this reviewing process the Lord will remind me of a special role he played, like …

 I was nervous because I didn’t know how I was going to juggle things around the noon hour, and then Joel called and wondered if he could put off our lunch for a couple of days, and that just freed up the log jam. Thank you Jesus … unexpected evidence of God’s care—write it down.

“What if it wasn’t Jesus?” you ask. “What if it really was a coincidence.”

I don’t worry about it. I figure there are so many times when the Lord didn’t get the credit he deserved, if this wasn’t his doing, well it evens things out some!

I guess I never did finish the Abraham’s servant story, did I? Let me share with you Genesis 24, verses 33 through to the end of the chapter:

Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing and gave them to Rebekah; he also gave costly gifts to her brother and to her mother. Then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there.

When they got up the next morning, he said, “Send me on my way to my master.”

But her brother and her mother replied, “Let the girl remain with us ten days or so; then you may go.”

But he said to them, “Do not detain me, now that the LORD has granted success to my journey. Send me on my way so I may go to my master.”

Then they said, “Let’s call the girl and ask her about it.” So they called Rebekah and asked her, “Will you go with this man?”

“I will go,” she said.

So they sent their sister Rebekah on her way, along with her nurse and Abraham’s servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her,

Our sister, may you increase
to thousands upon thousands;
may your offspring possess
the gates of their enemies.

Then Rebekah and her maids got ready and mounted their camels and went back with the man. So the servant took Rebekah and left.

Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?”

“He is my master,” the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.

Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her.

So, it sounds like Isaac also had a special “God Hunt Sighting” to write in his journal, as did Rebekah in hers, plus old Abraham as well.

The big question, of course, is whether or not you will be someone who goes on the God Hunt. I’m wondering how you are responding to the idea of looking for God in your everyday world.

Don’t be like Loser in the children’s story many of you will be reading to your young sons and daughters. Remember his grandma saying, “Oh, he’ll grow out of it.” Well, unfortunately, you won’t “grow out of” losing track of God’s presence in your everyday. Someday you will need to learn how to successfully hunt for Him. And what better time to discover how to do that than now?

That’s why one of the first steps you need to make is to get a notebook or journal. Make it a special place where you can record each day’s “God Hunt Sightings.”

I don’t believe Abraham’s servant was as much a man of faith as Abraham was. Nevertheless, God made his presence known to him in a most remarkable way. And you may picture yourself as far removed from ever being classified as a great hero of the church. But that doesn’t mean the Lord’s involvements in your life have to be few and far between. Why not decide now to join in the God Hunt this coming week and all this month until you pass that 5-day mark. By next week at this time you will rejoice in what the Lord is already doing. And, to help you along the way, I will keep examining in future blog posts additional ways to experience his involvement in our everyday worlds.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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In my previous blog post in this series, I talked about the importance of writing down your “God Hunt Sightings.” Please read carefully these good words from the introduction pages to a God Hunt Diary that we at Mainstay Ministries once published for one of our 50-Day Spiritual Adventures:

 Why is it important to use a diary? Because you will not remember if you do not begin to keep a lasting record. The tendency of all humans is to forget. We pray. We plead. We call on God with our requests. God answers. He performs miracles. The supernatural intersects with the natural and we stand around pondering, “Hmmm. What happened here?” You must write down your prayer requests in order to remember them, and then develop a daily habit of recording the way God has answered your prayers.

This God Hunt Diary will help you to make the spiritual concrete and recognizable. Your list of “God Hunt Sightings” will grow, and if you develop the discipline to add to it over the days, the weeks, the months, and the years of your life, you will have a remarkable written testament of the personal and intimate work of God in your own world. No matter how difficult times become, terror or pain or loss will not be able to convince you that God doesn’t care. Here is your record of the way you saw God.

The other thing you will begin to sense as you keep this God Hunt Diary is that God is drawing you to himself, attempting to show you his daily work, whispering to your soul, hoping you will develop that familiar intimacy. God, like a doting father playing hide-and-seek with his children, delights in being found by them, just as they delight in his finding them.

What I’m saying to you, reduced to a simple sentence reads like this: “Going on a daily God Hunt will help you find Him in your everyday world.” In my key sentence that Him has a capital “H” because it refers to God. Once again:“Going on a daily God Hunt will help you find Him in your everyday world.”

Now, do you have to carry your notebook or journal with you all day long so the instant you have an obvious answer to prayer you whip it out and write in it? Not really. But, why not keep it by your Bible. Then set a time, say each evening, when you purposely reflect back on your day and can write down your observations.

I think of this as kind of an end of the day replay. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but I just kind of do a mental run through the day. It started this way, then I worked on such and such, got this phone call, met the deadline on a given project and so on.

——————————————–

Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy