Hello Church and welcome to our 14 Days of Devotion. For those of you who may not know me, my name is Gabby and my husband, Josh and I, we run the youth ministry here across Brisbane. But I'm so excited to be sharing with you on day 10 of our 14 Days of Devotion. But hey, before I jump into it, I would encourage you, would you dig a little bit deeper in these 14 days? Would you position yourself to receive at our Revival Nights coming up, you don't want to miss out, you can register right now. It's only $5 for an individual, $15 for a family. It's a perfect way to end our 14 days of devotion by positioning ourselves, to receive something from God to come together as one church from all across Brisbane to press into God.
But hey, I'm excited to be sharing with you for day 10 so if you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to Acts 16: 23-26. But before we jump into that, I want to give you a little bit of context behind this story. For those of you who may know this story well, it's quite a story we hear all the time, but it's the story of Paul and Silas when they were thrown into prison. But before we get to that part, what we need to understand is that in this moment in the Scripture, Paul and Silas are actually on their way to a place of prayer. And on their journey, they actually encountered a woman who was possessed by a spirit. And in that moment they ministered to her and she set free. But there were a few people in that situation who didn't quite agree with what was taking place. They didn't quite accept the fact that Paul and Silas ministered to this woman and they were quite upset. And what happens, and what we see take place in the story, is Paul + Silas were actually thrown into prison because of what they did. And we're going to pick up this story in verse 23 it says this;
"Paul and Silas have been 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 fasten their feet in stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prisons was shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone's chains came loose."
You know, what I love about this story is that every single season Paul + Silas devoted themselves to God. You see, they were on their way to a place of prayer and then found themselves in a season, in a place of captivity. And what I love is that even though they were in that place, they devoted themselves to God, they sang hymns unto God, they sought after him in that season of captivity and one thing that I really want to encourage you, quickly with today, is that it doesn't matter what season you're going through, you can still devote yourself to God. It doesn't matter whether you're in a season of captivity, or a season of drought, maybe you feel like you're in a season of frustration, or maybe you're in a great season. What I love is that it doesn't matter what season we're in, we can still devote ourselves to God fully.
And we can see that in the life in Paul + Silas, in this story, is that even though they found themselves in the midnight hour, they still devoted themselves to God. And what happened when they devoted themselves to God was that they actually found freedom. You know, when we devote ourselves to God, we can encounter the freedom that He has for us. So across these 14 Days of Devotion, in the last four days that we have left, I want to encourage you doesn't matter what season you're going through. It doesn't matter whether you're in a great season or whether you're in a season of drought or frustration. We can devote ourselves to God and He can come and bring healing, He can come and bring freedom. He can come and bring restoration. So across these last four days, would you press in deeper? Would you devote yourself to Him? Would you position yourself to receive something at Revival Nights? Make sure you get registered? It's going to be the best four nights of your life. You do not want to miss out. We will see you there.