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DUBAI, UAE

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AMAZING STRENGTH

8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, saidto them, "Rulers and elders of our people, 9

are we being questioned today becausewe've done a good deed for a crippledman? Do you want to know how he washealed? 10 Let me clearly state to all of youand to all the people of Israel that he washealed by the powerful name of JesusChrist the Nazarene, the man you crucifiedbut whom God raised from the dead.

Acts 4:8-10 (NLT)

PETER

Peter (then Simon) was a fisherman along with his brother Andrew and the sons of Zebedee,

James and John.

Peter first preaching yielded to 3,000 new

believers.

Strength is behaviorborn out of belief .

What you believedetermines how

you behave.

PARRHESIA(par-rhay-see'-ah)

outspokenness, assurance, courage, confidence;

to act without fear.

Strong Prayers Strong Speaking

Strong Obedience

13 The members of the council were amazedwhen they saw the boldness of Peter andJohn, for they could see that they wereordinary men with no special training in theScriptures. 14They also recognized them asmen who had been with Jesus.

Acts 4:13-14 (NLT)

FACTS ABOUT

AMAZING STRENGTH

(1)

God gives ordinary people extraordinary strength.

FACTS ABOUT AMAZING STRENGTH

13 The members of the council were amazedwhen they saw the boldness of Peter andJohn, for they could see that they wereordinary men with no special training in theScriptures.

Acts 4:13a (NLT)

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TEAM EROY

27 Instead, God chose things the worldconsiders foolish in order to shame thosewho think they are wise. And he chosethings that are powerless to shame thosewho are powerful.

1 Corinthians 1:27 (NLT)

Amazing strength comes when we

anchor ourselves to Jesus.

(2)

Your strength will amazethe world.

FACTS ABOUT AMAZING STRENGTH

13 The members of the council were amazedwhen they saw the boldness of Peter andJohn

Acts 4:13a (NLT)

31 But those who wait on the Lord; Shallrenew their strength; They shall mount upwith wings like eagles, They shall run andnot be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV)

TEAM POLICARPIO

Amazing strength comes when we

rest in God.

HOW AMAZED ARE PEOPLE BY

YOUR STRENGTH?

(Scale it from 1 to 10)

(3)

Spiritual strength comes from knowing Christ.

FACTS ABOUT AMAZING STRENGTH

They also recognized them as men who hadbeen with Jesus.

Acts 4:14 (NLT)

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(1) TIME (2) FAITH

(3) STRENGTH(4) RESULTS

Goal is not strength. Knowing Christ is goal. Strength is byproduct.

Yes, everything else is worthless whencompared with the infinite value ofknowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For hissake I have discarded everything else,counting it all as garbage, so that I couldgain Christ

Philippians 3:8 (NLT)

20 We cannot stop telling about everythingwe have seen and heard.

Acts 4:20 (NLT)

Dead raised: Peter, girl,Tabitha, Dorcas, Paul,Euthychus

Healed: Peter lame man,Annaias heals Paul, Phillipcrippled.

Peter’s shadow fallsand heals

Cast out demons

Crazy needs met

1 The wicked man flees though no onepursues, but the righteous are as bold as alion.

Proverbs 20:1 (NLT)

HELEN ROSEVEARE(21 September 1925 –

7 December 2016)

Dr. Helen Roseveare, a famous English missionaryto the Congo, has passed away at the age of 91.Helen Roseveare was born in 1925 at HaileyburyCollege (Hertfordshire, England), where her fathertaught mathematics. Raised in a high Anglicanchurch, Helen’s Sunday school teacher once toldtheir class about India, and Helen resolved toherself that she would one day be a missionary.Despite the Christian heritage of her family, andfaithful attendance at church, Helen sensed a voidin her life and distance from God.

She enrolled in Newnham College at CambridgeUniversity to study medicine. There she joined theCambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU)through the invitation of a student named Dorothy.She became an active participant in the prayermeetings and Bible studies, reading the NewTestament for the first time. But she later said thather understanding of Christianity was more headknowledge than heart engagement.

In the winter of 1945, the Lord seemed to meet herin a personal way during a student retreat. She gaveher testimony on the final evening, and Bibleteacher Graham Scroggie wrote Philippians 3:10 inher new Bible, and told her:

Tonight you’ve entered into the first part of the verse, “That

I may know Him.” This is only the beginning, and there’s a

long journey ahead. My prayer for you is that you will go on

through the verse to know “the power of His resurrection”

and also, God willing, one day perhaps, “the fellowship of

His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.”

She felt an increased sense of calling towardmissions, and publicly declared during a missionarygathering in North England, “I’ll go anywhere Godwants me to, whatever the cost.”

Afterwards, I went up into the mountains and had it out

with God. “O.K. God, today I mean it. Go ahead and make

me more like Jesus, whatever the cost. But please

(knowing myself fairly well), when I feel I can’t stand

anymore and cry out, ‘Stop!’ will you ignore my ‘stop’ and

remember that today I said ‘Go ahead!’?”

After graduating from Cambridge with her doctoratein medicine, Helen studied for six months at theWorldwide Evangelization Crusade college atCrystal Palace. From there she went to Belgium tostudy French and Holland to take a course ontropical medicine as she prepared for herappointment as a medical missionary in the Congo.

In mid-March of 1953, at the age of 28, she arrivedin the northeastern region of the Congo (laternamed Zaire).

In the first two years, she founded a training schoolfor nurses, training women to serve as nurse-evangelists, who in turn would run clinics anddispensaries in different regions. In October 1955,she was asked to transfer seven miles away to runan abandoned maternity and leprosy center inNebobongo. Working with local Africans, Helenhelped to transform the center into a hospital with100 beds, serving mothers, lepers, and children,along with a training school for paramedics and 48rural clinics.

Outside of these facilities, there was no other medical

help for 150 miles in any direction. Exhausted, Helen

returned to England in 1958 for a furlough, during

which time she received further medical training.

The Congo became independent from Belgium in

1960, and civil war broke out in 1964. All of the medical

facilities they had established were destroyed. Helen

was among ten Protestant missionaries put under

house arrest by the rebel forces for several weeks,

after which time they were moved and imprisoned.

She describes the horror of what happened after she

tried to escape:

They found me, dragged me to my feet, struck me over

head and shoulders, flung me on the ground, kicked me,

dragged me to my feet only to strike me again—the

sickening searing pain of a broken tooth, a mouth full of

sticky blood, my glasses gone. Beyond sense, numb with

horror and unknown fear, driven, dragged, pushed back to

my own house—yelled at, insulted, cursed.

Her captors, she wrote, “were brutal and drunken. They

cursed and swore, they struck and kicked, they used the butt-

end of rifles and rubber truncheons. We were roughly taken,

thrown in prisons, humiliated, threatened.”

On October 29, 1964, Helen Roseveare was brutally

raped. She later recounted:On that dreadful night, beaten and bruised, terrified and

tormented, unutterably alone, I had felt at last God had

failed me. Surely He could have stepped in earlier, surely

things need not have gone that far. I had reached what

seemed to be the ultimate depth of despairing

nothingness.

In this darkness, however, she sensed the Lord saying

to her:You asked Me, when you were first converted, for the

privilege of being a missionary. This is it. Don’t you want

it? . . . These are not your sufferings. They’re Mine. All I ask

of you is the loan of your body.

She eventually received an “overwhelming sense of

privilege, that Almighty God would stoop to ask of me,

a mere nobody in a forest clearing in the jungles of

Africa, something He needed.”

She later pointed to God’s goodness despite this great

evil:

Through the brutal heartbreaking experience of rape, God

met with me—with outstretched arms of love. It was an

unbelievable experience: He was so utterly there, so totally

understanding, his comfort was so complete—and

suddenly I knew—I really knew that his love was

unutterably sufficient. He did love me! He did understand!

She also wrote:

[God] understood not only my desperate misery but also

my awakened desires and mixed up horror of emotional

trauma. I knew that Philippians 4:19, “My God will supply

every need of yours according to his riches in glory in

Christ Jesus,” was true on all levels, not just on a hyper-

spiritual shelf where I had tried to relegate it. . . . He was

actually offering me the inestimable privilege of sharing in

some little way in the fellowship of His sufferings.

This theme of “privilege” became prominent in Helen’s

ministry. In her Urbana ’76 address, she said:

One word became unbelievably clear, and that word

was privilege. He didn’t take away pain or cruelty or

humiliation. No! It was all there, but now it was

altogether different. It was with him, for him, in him. He

was actually offering me the inestimable privileged of

sharing in some little way the edge of the fellowship of

his suffering.

In the weeks of imprisonment that followed and in the

subsequent years of continued service, looking back,

This theme of “privilege” became prominent in Helen’s

ministry. In her Urbana ’76 address, she said:

One word became unbelievably clear, and that word was

privilege. He didn’t take away pain or cruelty or humiliation.

No! It was all there, but now it was altogether different. It

was with him, for him, in him. He was actually offering me

the inestimable privileged of sharing in some little way the

edge of the fellowship of his suffering.

This theme of “privilege” became prominent in Helen’s

ministry. In her Urbana ’76 address, she said:

One word became unbelievably clear, and that word was

privilege. He didn’t take away pain or cruelty or humiliation.

No! It was all there, but now it was altogether different. It

was with him, for him, in him. He was actually offering me

the inestimable privileged of sharing in some little way the

edge of the fellowship of his suffering.

In the weeks of imprisonment that followed and in the

subsequent years of continued service, looking back, one

has tried to “count the cost,” but I find it all swallowed up

in privilege. The cost suddenly seems very small and

transient in the greatness and permanence of the privilege.

After returning to African in 1966, she soon left

Nebobongo to establish a new medical center in

Nyankunde in northeastern Zaire, producing a 250-bed

hospital, maternity ward, training college for doctors, a

center for leprosy, and other endeavors.

There, too, she experienced several trials andrelational difficulties. She never claimed to see visionsor hear the voice of the Lord, but she did sense himrebuking her attitude. On one occasion, her convictionfrom the Lord went as follows:

You no longer want Jesus only, but Jesus plus . . . plus

respect, popularity, public opinion, success and pride. You

wanted to go out with all the trumpets blaring, from a

farewell-do that you organized for yourself with

photographs and tape-recordings to show and play at

home, just to reveal what you had achieved.

Time with Jesus builds your faith; which leads to strength

that produces spiritual results.

CONCLUSION

What are your weaknesses thatyou could give to God that willbecome your strength?

What are your strengths thatpeople notice?

What are things that you want others to see you as your

strength?

FAITHWORKS CHRISTIAN CHURCH GLOBAL

Presented By:

Ptr. Alvin Gutierrez

FCC Main San Mateo, Rizal, PH

Evening Worship Service,

January 8, 2017

Website: faithworkschristianchurch.com

Facebook Page: facebook.com/page/fccglobal

Twitter: @fccphilippines

Instagram: fccphilippines