Vineyard Church | Weekly Update April 10, 2024

24 Suddenly, Festus shouted, “Paul, you are insane. Too much study has made you crazy!”

25 But Paul replied, “I am not insane, Most Excellent Festus. What I am saying is the sober truth. 26 And King Agrippa knows about these things. I speak boldly, for I am sure these events are all familiar to him, for they were not done in a corner! 27 King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do—”

28 Agrippa interrupted him. “Do you think you can persuade me to become a Christian so quickly?” 

29 Paul replied, “Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that both you and everyone here in this audience might become the same as I am, except for these chains.” Acts 26:24-29 (NLT; emphasis added)

This is Paul.… Paul was a baller; Paul was sold out for the Gospel; Paul was nothing short of heroic in his proclamation of faith. In Acts 26, speaking in his own defense, Paul lays down his testimony and calls his accusers and those meaning to judge him to follow Jesus. 

Knowing the power of the message of Jesus the Christ, knowing that nothing can stop the unfolding plan of God, Paul committed his life to telling his story, even using the story of how Jesus impacted his life to give a defense in the court of King Agrippa. 

Testimony, telling the story of how Jesus presented His sacrificial love and how this love changed a life, is the most common and most effective vehicle for the mission of God. Consider the woman at the well in John 4, or even Zaccheus in Luke 19. Both of these people lived lives that, for different reasons, were reprehensible to all known decency. To know and understand the story of these two lives before they met Jesus is to know and understand the depth of depravity that sin causes in our lives. Because Jesus is eager to justify the sinner, he presents his love to both of these people and sees them turn from their sin, repent, and follow Jesus…and more.

Read John 4 and Luke 19. Watch what happens next.… These two sinners become Gospel proclaimers. They tell EVERYONE. What else could they do but tell people of the saving grace they found in Jesus? Upon hearing the great commission of Matthew 28 and Mark 16, the charge Jesus gives his followers to go and tell the world about him, the woman at the well and Zacchaeus would not have to change anything; they were already nailing it. I sense a monkey see, monkey do coming… But first, one more example:

John Newton was born in London in 1725; his father was an officer in the Royal Navy, and his mother, a member of the Reformed church, would read the Bible to him as a young kid. John’s mother would often pray that he would become a pastor, but she died when he was seven, and with her death, John saw the death of his spiritual training. 

When he turned 11, John’s father took him aboard the ship he commanded and had him spend the final years of his father’s naval career at sea with him. Upon retirement, John’s father took a job in the Royal Africa Company, the company authorized by the crown to conduct human trafficking.

John’s father, wanting to set his son up for life, got him a job that would take him to Jamaica to oversee a slave plantation, but because of a girl, he missed his boat to Jamaica. Deciding to punish him for this, John’s father sent him back to sea to work as a sailor. At 19, he was forced to enlist in the Royal Navy, which did not go well.... Newton was rebellious and always in need of discipline. He deserted often; was captured, flogged, and finally booted out of the Navy.

Much later, Newton would describe himself as arrogant, rebellious, and recklessly sinful. He said, “I sinned with a high hand, and I made it my study to tempt and seduce others.”

Next, Newton took a job on an island off the coast of Sierra Leone with a slave trader, a time he would remember as the lowest point of his life. He wrote that he became “a wretched looking man toiling in a plantation of lemon trees in the island of plantains.” After living in these conditions for over a year, John Newton got a job on the Greyhound, a notorious slave trading vessel based out of Liverpool. On this ship, he started to read the Bible, as well as a book called The Imitation of Christ.

On March 21, 1748, The Greyhound was caught in a severe north Atlantic storm. Slaves and crewmen alike were washed over the rail by the stormy sea, while Newton bailed water out of the ship. In this moment, he began to pray, a moment he would later say was the hour he first believed. 

After this, Newton went through a cycle of turning to God and sliding back into his old sinful ways. He served as Captain of two different slave ships during the next several years, an experience that brought him to the point of hating slavery and shame for his involvement. 

In 1755, he left the sea and started going to church.… He heard the words of George Whitefield and John Wesley and, at age 39, was ordained as a pastor. He began to work though his past and found that writing hymns allowed a way to express what he believed.

“This is faith: a renouncing of everything we are apt to call our own and relying wholly upon the blood, righteousness, and intercession of Jesus.”

After a life of reckless sinfulness, John Newton found Jesus. After seeing the evil of slavery and being responsible for the trading of hundreds of humans, of God’s creation, he surrendered to God, and he captured this journey in a hymn that was included in a publication called the Olney Hymns.

John Newton testified.… He told his story by writing Amazing Grace. The power of his story has impacted generations of Christians even if they don’t know his full story. Testimony matters.

Now the monkey see, monkey do…Barna Research Group conducted a study and found that the vast majority of American Christians stop telling their story, stop sharing the gospel around the five-year mark after their salvation. In fact, in a more recent study, only 52% of American Christians report having shared the Gospel Message with someone in the last year. Nearly half of the followers of Jesus are no longer telling their story.… The reasons listed include all their friends are Christian, that it isn’t seen as their primary job, the pressure of opposition culture makes it too difficult, or they just don’t know how to tell their story.

Scroll down from this blog and you will find an invitation to a workshop that will help craft the story of Jesus in your life. Your story is meant to be a vehicle to share the love of Christ; your story is the key to doing the stuff that Jesus did. Sign up for this workshop and engage in the task Jesus left for us, to go and tell and make disciples of all the nations. 

Adam Greenwell
Pastor  |  Billings Vineyard Church
www.BillingsVineyard.org