Perhaps the greatest line about the Resurrection comes from the famous preacher of another age, J. S. Whale, who said, "The Gospels do not explain the Resurrection; the Resurrection explains the Gospels."
How do you wake up in the morning? Someone once asked my wife if she woke up grumpy in the morning. She replied, "No, I usually just let him sleep." Paul says, "The night is far gone, and the day is near."
Where do you fit? What is your spiritual gift? God is calling you to be a good steward of the gift you have been given. God wants you to "present (yourselves) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
If everyone is tempted, what is the difference between temptation and sin? Martin Luther once said that temptation is like a bird flying over our head. No one can prevent that from happening. But sin is when we let the bird build a nest in our hair!
Our poverty in prayer is all about us, but the Scripture offers us good news! "The Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can't be uttered" (Romans 8:26). Precisely in our weakness we may discover help from the Spirit.
In our text, there is the assumption of Paul that believers should receive the Holy Spirit "when they became believers." This verse indicates that Paul expected a person to know they had the Holy Spirit upon their conversion to Christ.
"Sin is a relationship to God focused in self-centeredness, which shows itself in unloving attitudes and acts toward our fellow men. It is when we seek our own wills instead of God's will and regulate our lives by such self-seeking that sin corrupts our nature." (Georgia Harkness)
G. Campbell Morgan sums up Paul's message this way, "If you really want to find God, do not degrade yourselves in erecting images of gold and silver. Listen to the deepest fact of your own being; be silent in the presence of the mystery of what you are; and then look out beyond to that unknown God whom I declare to you."
Paul Tillich once preached a famous sermon in which he insisted that we have to accept the fact that we are accepted. Perhaps the deepest need that every one of us has is that of being accepted. The search for acceptance can be seen in all kinds of behavior.
This girl is a lucrative small-business enterprise for the men who own her. Like so many young girls, she is used by others, but her strange public announcements about Paul and his little band of missionaries, we suspect, do not bring much income to her owners. "These men," she cries out, "are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us a way of salvation."