Sermon - Do you want to follow Jesus? - Acts 16:16-24

The Bible says that there is a spiritual battle.

And Whether you recognize it or not, living as a Christian means being in that spiritual warfare constantly.

It's a real and serious battle, and it becomes even deadlier when we don't see it, when we don't recognize it.

But in fact, it's quite easy to overlook that spiritual reality in our everyday life because, like Ephesians 6 says, the battle is not against blood and flesh, but it's against the rulers, the authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

It's quite easy to miss that.

Then how do we begin to see it? How do we begin to realize this reality in our busy day-to-day life? It begins with knowing Jesus.

It doesn't begin with knowing ourselves.

It doesn't begin with knowing about the enemy.

It begins at the place of knowing Jesus.

Our mission as a body is to know Jesus and make Jesus known.

And when we say that, knowing Jesus doesn't mean merely knowing about him.

But what we're after is to know Jesus as he's revealed in the Bible, and also to know him relationally.

So we want to know him through the written word, and we want to know him personally, relationally, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

It's the word and spirit going hand in hand, we always talk about.

And knowing Jesus that way, in that way, in word and spirit, we believe that that leads us to renewal, which is our vision as a local church.

We want to be a church, renewed and renewing church.

And renewal, that's a place where we begin to test and discern the will of God from what is not the will of God and what is good, acceptable, and perfect from what is not good, not acceptable, and not perfect, like Romans 12 says.

It's a life of abiding in Christ.

We often use the acronym SWAP, W-S-A-P, surrender, wait, annihilate, and pursue.

We surrender to Jesus everything.

We surrender everything to Jesus, and we wait on Him, and we annihilate sins constantly, and we pursue His presence and obedience.

And that is how we begin to realize this spiritual battle and how we fight when we face one.

And in today's text, Paul and his team show us an example on how to spot the battle and how to deal with it.