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Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to day two, week six of our
look through the book of Acts, our last week in Acts, Acts chapter 25 today, and
we're looking at what it's like to get stuck. Paul, stuck in prison for two
years. You might remember from yesterday, in prison for two years.

And now Festus comes in to take over Felix's position, and Felix says, "I'll
keep Paul in prison just to please the Jews," as Festus comes in to take this
over. And now Festus is going to hear Paul's case. So what happens?

How does God show up for Paul? Listen to what happens in chapter 25, verses one
to eight. Three days after arriving in the province, Festus went up from
Caesarea to Jerusalem, where the chief priests and the Jewish leaders appeared
before him and presented their charges against Paul.

They urgently requested Festus as a favor to them to have Paul transferred to
Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way. Festus
answered, "Paul is being held at Caesarea, and I myself am going there soon. Let
some of your leaders come with me and press charges against the man there if
he's done anything wrong.

" After spending eight or ten days with them, he went down to Caesarea, and the
next day he convened the court and ordered that Paul be brought before him. When
Paul appeared, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him,
bringing many serious charges against him, which they could not prove. Then Paul
made his defense, "I have done nothing wrong against the law of the Jews, or
against the temple, or against Caesar.

" Now as I read these verses, these first eight verses, if you've been with us
in this study through the book of Acts, there has to be something in you that
thinks, "I've heard all this before. The Jews have planned before to kill Paul
in an ambush in between Jerusalem and Caesarea. They've made these charges
before.

Felix has heard it before, and now Festus is hearing the same thing. Paul is
having to make the same defense again. It's enough to be stuck once, but now
he's stuck twice.

He's still stuck. So what do you do when you're still stuck? Yesterday we talked
about the fact that when you're stuck, you put your confidence in God.

You don't try to manipulate your way out. When you feel stuck in life, you
continue to serve others even when you're feeling stuck. Today we're going to
talk about some other things you and I can do.

Number four, what do you do when you feel stuck? You don't fall into the blame
trap. You don't start blaming yourself, or blaming others, or worst of all,
blaming God because life is not working out like you want it to work out.

The ugliest might be the first of those. You blame yourself. You wallow in the
mud of needlessly blaming yourself.

And here are the two words that that mud is made of. If only. Paul could have
said, "If only I hadn't gone to Jerusalem.

If only I hadn't taken that vow. If only I hadn't, if only I hadn't. " And you
could do the same thing.

If only I hadn't taken that job. If only I'd quit that job earlier. If only I'd
asked her to marry me.

If only I hadn't asked her to marry me. If only I'd done this or done that. We
blame ourselves.

We blame others, angry that they put us in this situation. We feel stuck and we
look for someone to blame. Or we blame God.

Why should I have to wait at all, we say to God? If God could make the world in
six days, why can't he answer my prayer right now? Here's the problem with
blame.

It keeps you from seeing what God can do. You're so focused on what you didn't
do, or what others didn't do for you, or what God is not doing for you. You're
not looking for what God can do right now in the situation.

So you don't fall into the blame trap. Paul certainly didn't. He kept serving
God even while in prison.

What do you do when you're stuck? Here's a fifth thing you do. You use the time
wisely.

While Paul is stuck in prison, here in Caesarea, and even more later when he's
going to be stuck in prison in Rome, he uses the time. He thinks about those
churches that he served and he decides to sit down and he writes some letters to
those churches while stuck in prison. Many of those letters became the New
Testament.

He wrote to Galatia and now we have Galatians. He wrote to the Philippians and
now we have the letter of Philippians. He wrote to the churches and now we have
the New Testament.

In fact, you can say without a shadow of a doubt that the most lasting thing
that Paul did in his life happened when he felt stuck, happened when he felt on
the shelf because he continued to use his time wisely. I can remember in my own
life, a number of years ago, I broke an Achilles tendon and I was stuck in a
cast for several months. The way the cast was put on, I couldn't speak in front
of other people without being very uncomfortable.

I just felt on the shelf. I learned during those days two things about using my
time wisely. I learned, number one, that it's a lot easier to say have a good
attitude while you're stuck than to actually have a good attitude while you're
stuck.

It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work in trusting in him, looking to
God day by day and moment by moment. But I also learned that if you keep on
serving, it does pay off in the end.

I wrote our Foundations Doctrinal Study for other churches while I was stuck,
while I couldn't do other things. It's amazing the things that can happen in
your life when you're feeling stuck. You ask yourself this question, "What does
God want me to do now that I would never do if I wasn't stuck?

" And the answer certainly isn't worry. The answer certainly isn't raise your
blood pressure by 25 points. What does he want you to do?

It might be deepen a relationship. It might be write a book or an article. It
might be finishing projects around the house or read through the Bible or do
what you love.

It might have to do with art or music or woodworking or gardening or learn
something new. Sometimes when you get stuck, life slows down a little, so you
take advantage of that because it's not going to last for long. It's going to
speed up again.

So you ask yourself, "How can I use my time wisely? " There's a sixth thing that
you and I can do when we're feeling stuck, and that is you surround yourself
with God's people all through this experience of being stuck. We read about it
in the last chapter.

It's happening in this chapter. We're going to see it happen in chapters to
come. Paul is not alone.

It's one thing to be stuck. It's another to be stuck and alone. It's amazing the
difference that even one person can make.

So I'd encourage you, if you're not in a small group, get in one. If you feel
like, "I don't need one because I'm not stuck right now," you're going to be
stuck at some point in life. And right now is the perfect time to get in a small
group.

I don't know when you're listening to this, but I'm telling you, anytime is the
perfect time because you need it now. Whenever I feel motivated to do it is when
I need to do it. The Bible tells us again and again that we need to keep getting
together with other believers.

The strong temptations in our lives come when we're all alone. Coldness in our
heart comes when we're all alone. So you get together with other believers.

You don't wait until you get in a tough time or a stuck time to build a support
network. You'll either be too busy or too discouraged and exhausted when that
happens. No, you do it now.

You surround yourself with God's people. And then there's a seventh and a final
thing you do when you're feeling stuck. And that is you believe.

You believe that God is working. Paul certainly did. That's why he does.

That's why he acts as he does in verses 9 to 12. Listen to what happens. Again,
we're repeating history.

In verse 9, Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, "Are you
willing to go up to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there on these charges?
" Paul answered, "I am now standing before Caesar's court, where I ought to be
tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well.

If however I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to
die. But if these charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one
has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar.

" After Festus had conferred with his counsel, he declared, "You have appealed
to Caesar. To Caesar you will go. " Paul appeals to Caesar because Paul is a
Roman citizen.

He has a right that only the Roman citizen had in that day. And that was to
appeal directly to the supreme, supreme of supreme courts to Caesar. Any Roman
citizen could do this, and they would be brought directly to Caesar's court to
face trial.

This meant when Paul said, "I appeal to Caesar," it meant he would not go to
Jerusalem. It meant that he would go to Rome. And Paul knew that God was sending
him to Rome.

Paul knew that God was still working. God knew that even while he felt stuck,
God was at work. And so he appeals to Caesar.

Now you might feel stuck on hold with God right now, almost like a busy signal
or being put into God's sort of answering service when you call heaven again and
again. And you feel that you're getting this message, all our angels are busy
right now, but if you'll hold the line, someone can be with you before the end
of the next millennium. Then the hallelujah chorus starts playing over and over
and over again in the background.

If you feel that way, there's a new way to think. And that is God uses the
detours. Sometimes what we think is a detour actually gets us back on track.

This detour in Paul's life was just one step on the way to Rome. What we think
is a dead end can be a road to new life. We look at it as a crooked road can
cause us to think straight.

Many times in life, we want God's resources, but not his timing. We want God to
give us what we want, what we think he wants for us. We don't want to wait for
his timing in it, but God's timing is perfect.

When you're stuck, there is another side to that. You're going to come out of
that time of being stuck with things that you did not have. Expect, believe in
God that you will come out of a time of being stuck with multiplied new
challenges and blessings, with personal growth and change in your life that
would not otherwise have happened, with a clarification of God's direction for
your life, with a new and stronger relationship with God.

When we hear words like "stuck" and "wait," we think "stop. " But the word
"wait" in the Bible, in the Old Testament, it does not mean "stop. " The word
"wait" has more of the meaning of "trust," and that's what I need to do.

That's what you need to do when you and I feel stuck. Let's trust him right now.
Jesus, we trust you with this, and if we're not feeling stuck right now, we
trust you with that.

Next time, we're going to feel that way. When I'm stuck, help me to trust in
you. If there's something I need to do, give me the strength and the wisdom to
do it.

If I need to wait, give me the faith and the patience to wait on you. I pray
this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to meet again a guy that we get introduced to at the end
of this chapter, King Agrippa, and we'll hear Paul's testimony before this king
and how this testimony teaches us about how to share our story of faith and how
to have vision in our lives.