We’ve been traveling through the Book of Acts seeing amazing, life changing things happen. There have been miraculous signs and wonders filling the believers with excitement and unity. More and more people are becoming believers. We see God at work in great and powerful ways.

Then a group of people, the Sadducees, come in and try to put a stop to it all. Acts 5:17- 42 tells the story about their jealousy and the ways they try to prevent the believers from talking about Jesus. Threats of death, time in jail, and whippings have only encouraged the believers to continue telling others the good news. Even after being flogged, which was being beaten with “forty lashes minus one,” the believers in this story celebrated. They took what seemed to be a real bumming situation, and turned it into rejoicing. See Acts 5:41-42.

A few questions for us today: Do we take the bad, difficult, frustrating things that happen to us and turn it into good? Do we turn our misery into rejoicing? Do we handle our circumstances in a way that points people to Jesus? There’s no doubt that these can be difficult to do.

Remember, God chooses normal, everyday sinners like you and me to tell and show others the way. To be an authentic difference maker for the Kingdom. To be bold even if we’re not confident, we fumble over our words, or we fear persecution from others. To turn our misery, into our ministry. The Holy Spirit will help us to use our own story to point people to Christ. Our words become His.