Planted In Pressure - Jen Timberlake

What happens when life feels like everything is falling apart? In this powerful Mother’s Day message, Pastor Jen walks through Acts 8 and reveals how God often plants purpose in seasons of pressure. Through persecution, pain, rejection, and unexpected places, God was still advancing His Kingdom.
From Philip being sent to Samaria to the powerful connection with the woman at the well in John 4, this message reminds us that God can use your pain, your past, and even your hardest seasons to produce eternal fruit.

If you’ve ever felt scattered, overlooked, rejected, or broken—this message will remind you that God is still writing your story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, I'm Tim Timberlake, and I want to thank you so much for listening to the Celebration Church podcast. I hope this message encouraged you, strengthened your faith, and gave you something you can carry into your week. If you'd like to stay connected, I encourage you to join us live every Sunday at 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. on YouTube. We would love to have you there. And if you're ever in the Jacksonville, Florida area, come see us in person. We have a seat safe for you. Thanks again for being with us. We're so grateful for you. And see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

If you're new this morning, my name is Pastor Jen. I have the honor and privilege of serving this house alongside my husband, Pastor Tim. If you're new to us watching online, can we just give a shout out to our Celebration Everywhere family this morning? We love you. We're so grateful you tuned in. Can we take a moment and just give a shovel for our moms in this place? Happy Mother's Day, everybody. Happy Mother's Day to the moms. I just want to take a really just quick moment to say happy Mother's Day to my mom watching in Canada. She's part of our celebration everywhere family. And I love you, and I would not be who I am without the love of my mom and the love of my dad. They are the most incredible people. I could not ask for better parents, but I could not ask for a more beautiful picture of the servanthood of Christ than who my mom is. So even though she won't sit with me on the front row when she's here, she's the best. And I love you, and I wish you happy Mother's Day, mom. To my mommy. I still call her mommy. Actually, it's I I call her mom or mommy because in Canada we spell it M-U-M. I know. Strange, but so happy Mother's Day. And I just want to take a quick moment to say I'm so proud of our church. Last Sunday was One Child Sunday, our sponsorship Sunday. We sponsored just shy of 300 beautiful kids in Zim. Absolutely amazing. So I am so grateful to serve alongside such a generous, beautiful house. I want to remind everybody that if you took a packet and you have yet to fill it out, would you please do so? And if you are not going to fill it out, well it's digital, but you're gonna digitally fill it out and sponsor that incredible child. If not, please, please, please, please return those packets to us. No judgment, we just need to get them back. So if you have one at your house, would you bring it to us next Sunday? Um, or go ahead, pray, ask God, hey, I got this for a reason, and go ahead and finish filling that out. We're just so grateful. Listen, we're going to jump right into Acts chapter 8. Happy Mother's Day to me. Tim left me with Saul Ravages the Church. So praise the Lord. I uh I said, Really, Tim? Really, Tim? I love you so much. He's the best. And you know what? It is Mother's Day, and we thank God for our moms, but there's nothing more important than Jesus Christ. And so we're gonna continue in our scripture this morning. If you're taking notes, the title of my message is Planted in Pressure, which is probably really true to moms. So there you go. There's your Mother's Day message. Planted in Pressure. And I'm gonna kick off reading from uh verse one just to give us uh a little reminder of where we left off last week, and then our new scripture today starts in verse three. So verse one says, Now Saul approved of putting Stephan to death, and on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except for the apostles. Some devout men buried Stefan and mourned loudly for him. And this is where we're gonna pick up, okay, in our the new scripture this morning, chapter verse 3 says, But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and he would drag off men and women and put them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. So, Father God, I just thank you, Lord. I thank you, God, that we get to gather here freely together to lift up your name. I ask, God, that your word would go out and land on soft hearts, ready to receive what you've been preparing in them all along. You knew who would be here from the beginning of time, and you have something for each person in this room, watching online, around the world, Lord. You know what every son and every daughter needs. And so I just ask, God, that you would speak through me, that every word I say would come from you, that your will would be done in this place. God, as we walk through your word, we hold it as the sword of the Spirit, God, slicing through darkness, inviting us into your marvelous light, a life with you that we could never imagine, Lord. You see, each one of us, you know what we need, you know how we walked in here today. You know how we sit before you, some broken, some encouraged, some lost, some confused, some disheartened. Lord, you know each one of us. So speak to us, I pray, God. Oh Father, I ask, I ask these things in the name of your Son. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. You can take your seats. So I want to give a little bit of context for where we are at, okay? And just a little history, if that's okay, before we kind of jump into our notes and our points. Because I think it's really important that we understand who Philip is. So Philip is kind of coming to us in verse 5, and it feels a little out of nowhere. It's not actually, if you're reading Acts all the way through, the last time we see Philip is in Acts chapter 6, okay? And that's not that far back, but for us, and if you've been following along with us on this journey, it was actually in December, okay? So, Philip, if we don't remember or we're not familiar, Philip, this Philip that we encounter, this is not Philip, one of Jesus' disciples, okay? This is not one of his 12 disciples, Philip. This is Philip who was chosen as one of the seven to serve the Hellenistic Jews. If you remember, we come across this passage in chapter six, and the Hellenistic Jews are Jewish people who had lived outside of Jerusalem, in the ancient Mediterranean world, and they had adopted the Greek language, the culture, the customs, but they maintained their Jewish faith. And so some of these Hellenistic Jews had come back to Jerusalem and their widows were being neglected. So the early church chooses seven men. The apostles tell them to choose seven men who are of good reputation, full of the spirit and full of wisdom, and then they're commissioned by the apostles to serve the people. And this is Philip. Philip was chosen alongside Stefan, so he would have known Stefan. So I'm sure that we find Philip in a place where he's reeling from the loss of his friend, but he's sent and scattered into the land of Samaria. So where is Samaria? This is extremely important, and it's going to become more important as we work through the scriptures. So I want to give you kind of an understanding about what is Samaria. So Samaria was a region in central Israel, and it it isn't it isn't anything at first, but it comes to be after the death of Solomon and the kingdom of Israel, if you maybe are familiar with the Old Testament, is divided into two kingdoms. You have the kingdom to the south, which is Judah, eventually becoming the region of Judea, and then you have the kingdom to the north, which is Israel. So the northern kingdom's capital, it doesn't start out as Samaria, but it eventually becomes it under a king named Omri. So Omri, you can read about in 1 Kings chapter 16. Not a lot is said about him, but there's actually a lot of archaeological evidence and historical evidence about him. Even texts outside of the Bible refer to him as the king of Israel, like it's Omri's land. And so he had a lot of influence in the area and even outside of Israel. Omri was a king for 12 years, but his bloodline would rule over the northern kingdom of Israel for a hundred years. And his son would succeed him. You may be more familiar with his son. His son's name was Ahab. And Ahab marries a woman named Jezebel. And they are the worst, okay? They are horrible. They bring Israel into worshiping false gods, they build a temple to a false god named Baal. They persecute and murder most of Israel's prophets. They are horrible. And they do get what's coming to them, but they they they really bring Israel, the kingdom, northern kingdom of Israel, into a chaotic state. So a hundred years go by, and Omri's uh Omri's butt bloodline is conquered and overcome by the Assyrians. So they conquer Samaria in 721 BC, and you can read about that in 2 Kings 17. But upon the Assyrian conquest, they take the people of Israel captive, and then they force half of the population out of the land. And then they bring in Gentiles into the land who worshipped pagan idols. Okay? This is very important. And I know it's like, why are you telling us this? Well, this new population of Jews and Gentiles, they eventually over time intermarry and they become known as the Samaritans. The Samaritans, it says in 2 Kings 17, 33, it says that so they feared the Lord, but also served their own gods. So over time, and because of this, the Jewish people living in Judea and the people living in Samaria, they hate each other. Over hundreds of years, multiple conflicts and horrible events that happen in both kingdoms, tensions and hostilities, they rise and are at an all-time high. So by the time that we see Philip heading to Samaria, we have a picture of true hatred. Samaritans were looked at by both Jews and Gentiles as ethnically impure, religiously compromised, they were heretics, and they were outside of faithful covenant to God. So it's ugly and it's complicated, and they live in the same land, but they hate each other. Feels familiar. So this is where we are. So coming back to the scriptures, we know that in the f the first few scriptures of chapter 8, we see that no sooner is the church of God planted than it's being persecuted. And the people are scattered, it says, through Judea and Samaria. And in verse 3, we get this picture of the true intensity of the persecution. It says, but Saul was ravaging the church. Entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. This word ravish in the Greek is luminomi, okay? It means to treat shamefully with injury, to bring havoc, devastation, to bring ruin upon, and to destroy. So we're reading of a violent attack and brutal devastation to the church. But it's not isolated opposition. It's organized oppression, purposeful persecution, destruction intended to destroy, dehumanize, and devalue a certain people group. See, if we're not careful and we don't pay attention, history repeats itself. The scripture continues, house after house, they dragged off men and women. See, this is significant to note because even it's not just about that. The scripture highlights men and women, which is incredibly rare at the time of these ancient texts being written to highlight women. But it doesn't just highlight women to give them equal value, it highlights women because it shows the crippling effect and attack that this that it would have had on households, entire households, being put in prison. Because even though our opposition may not look like being dragged off and out of our homes and put in prison for our faith, though I need to say there are many around the world, some watching in areas that they can't even possess a Bible. And we in the West take it for granted. In our hand we hold versions of the Bible. We can read it any way we want. While our brothers and our sisters are being martyred and thrown in jail. But just because it doesn't look like that for us, make no mistake, the enemy is still attacking our homes and our families. We find ourselves today in a battle bound and shackled by a plague of moral decay in society, eroding the fabric of our families, stripping us of our identities in Christ, leading us into the hell, havoc. We elevate agendas like idols of old and we neglect our neighbors. We let screens raise our kids while we scream our opinions onto our online platforms, and we wonder how hatred and decay has divided our homes. Like Judea and Samaria, we let our differences divide and destroy us. The enemy is ravaging the ministry that's meant to happen in our homes, and half the time we're the one to invite them in. To be led by his word. They did so following in the footsteps of Stephan through, though persecuted for their position of Christ, they were undeterred in carrying the Great Commission. And Luke writes so intentionally, he uses the word scattered, and there is one way to look at the word scattered, and that infers the agricultural nature of sowing seed. It's distributed, not in one place, but across the land. If you're familiar, if you if you know anything about farming or maybe nothing at all, you don't just plant seed to get a harvest in a field in one place, it's scattered across the land. It is essential to the harvest that the seed be scattered. And so, point number one, if you're taking notes, is this we learn from the skip from the scripture that seed scattered by persecution can still be planted by God. See, they took what was ugly and they let God make something beautiful out of it. The opposition they faced, the enemy they encountered, it didn't deter their obedience. Though they were treated with hostility, they didn't let it harden their hearts, but rather they held on to hope. They were led and lifted by a holy God and a perfect savior as scattered seeds. They themselves still sowed seeds of love. And I want to just speak momentarily to the people out there that have walked through sorrow, that have experienced hurt and hostility. I encourage you. A hard heart is the hope of hell. But a soft heart is the soil of our Savior. I want to talk to the single moms today. That today may not feel as special because you don't have someone corralling your kid to celebrate you. That you have walked through deep heartache and pain, and for whatever reason, relationships haven't worked, and maybe they didn't work from the beginning, but you are seen and you are loved by God. And He wants to use you. Do not let what has hurt you harden you. Because you are meant to sow seeds of love into your child, but if you do not release the pain that has affected you, you will sow bitter seeds. And you are not meant to. You are a reflection of Christ in the earth, to the world around you, and to the child that depends on you. And he has a great plan and a great purpose for you, for all of us. But we must let him heal us so that he can use us. I pray that it would be said about us as a church. That like the early church, we are undeterred by our pain. And rather we are propelled by it. Because point number two. We are to let the pain of our past plant us deeper in Christ. Don't let your pain make you bitter. Let it make you better and plant you deeper. It's not to say that we're supposed to ignore it because we're not. We actually have to uproot it and deal with it. So that then we can be planted deeper in Christ, more rooted in his word, watered by his presence, connected to his vine, and it is all for his glory. There may be pain and sorrow in the planting, but there is provision in persevering. And if you persevere, if you let God wash you, cleanse you, make you new, uproot the things of old, and plant you deeper in his new creation. There is an unbelievable, unexpected, beautiful life to be had. I am a living testimony of that life. The pain I once held on to, the pain that led me, the pain that I literally let make decisions for me. It crippled me. I could never have been used by him. It wasn't until I literally had, and you've heard me probably say it before, like I lost my mind so I could find it in Christ. Thank God for that moment. Because this is point number three. God knows how to grow something eternal out of what temporarily tried to destroy you. If you allow him, he will use even the very worst for his eternal glory. I stand before you, and all I have said is yes. A testimony, not to me, but to the Lord. A testimony of his goodness and his faithfulness, of how he never stops chasing after us, of how he will actually use the good and even more so the bad and work it together for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. But we actually, in the bad and the good, have to acknowledge that we need him to work it together. It's not about our own works. I could do nothing to deserve his grace and his mercy and his love. And neither can you. We are undeserving. But man, he is a good God, a faithful father. He is near to the brokenhearted, and if we let him, oh my goodness, the things he will do with our lives. And it brings me to verse five. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.

unknown 25:45

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

And it feels like we should pass by the scripture and then talk about what Philip did in Samaria. But can we sit here? I need us to grasp this. Philip goes to Samaria. And I'm not gonna lie, I did not realize this until I started studying for this message, and I sat with the Lord and I started to ask God questions, and he started to show me something so beautiful. Since Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, it had been about two to four years that had passed. And this that we read right here, that Philip goes down to Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. This is the first public mission outside of Jerusalem that is detailed and recorded to us. And it's not to Judea, where the people of God lived. It's not in Galilee, it's not in Bethlehem where Jesus was born, it's not in Nazareth, where he comes from, it's in Samaria. And and I don't want to confuse us because the Bible clearly tells us that believers were scattered in Judea as well as Samaria, so we know that there was a mission going out across the land all over. But what is detailed and recorded to us first before any other place is Samaria. The same Samaria and the same Samaritans that everybody hated. God tells us about this place first, about these people, the people that were rejected, that were not accepted by Jew or by Gentile, the people that were considered impure, discredited, dishonored, and unfaithful, with broken covenants and their backs turned to God. They were mixed race, they were religiously compromised, and they were idol worshipers who look different, talk different, think different, and believe different. These people. Take me as the seed that has been scattered in your life. He loves you, and there is nothing that you can do to avoid the love of our Lord and our Savior. His word says that if you make your bed in hell, even there he will be with you. That is how much he loves you. But the greatest thing that you can do is reflect Christ to them. And it isn't by pressuring them into walking through these doors. It is by loving them unconditionally until they're ready to take that step of faith. I promise you those seeds are worth it. Despite their hardness of heart, you pray God replace their heart of stone with a heart of flesh, that your seeds may be sowed into their life. And then let your life reflect that of Christ. Because if it doesn't, those seeds will never penetrate into that heart. We are the hands and feet of Jesus. We are a light to the world and salt to the earth. To our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers. I pray that they would say about us truly that we love well. Point number four is this. What looks like chaos is really cultivation. This is the most beautiful part of where this scripture brings us to me. This is what I cried over and stood in awe of as I realized God's divine appointment for Philip. See, it's not the first time the people of Samaria have been told about Christ. It seems strange for Philip to go here, but it is no surprise to God. If you have read the Gospels, then you may be familiar. And if you haven't and you're new to your faith, I want to tell you something amazing. See, in John chapter 4, we get to read about Jesus passing through Samaria, and he stops at a well, and he encounters a woman there. And this woman is shunned, not just by Jews, but even by her own people. She is outcast by society. She was burdened by a history of pain and past mistakes, known only in the word as the Samaritan woman or the woman at the well. She was disgraced and dishonored. She had had five husbands, and the man that she was living with was not even her husband. Jesus tells her her own story. See, we can only imagine what she might have gone through with this as her reality. She was a Samaritan, hated, and she was a woman with no rights. She was shamed by society. She was broken, and she was nameless to us. She was the most unlikely of messengers. But it was this woman that Jesus chose to first entrust to carry the message that he is the Messiah. There is no one in the Bible outside of his disciples. He makes no public declaration that he is the Messiah except first to this woman. This woman. Nothing. But she was chosen as the first to carry the message about Jesus. And the word says that she ran into the town and she told everyone she met about the Christ. She proclaimed it to these same people that we now see Philip sent to. Yet again, chosen as the first to receive the first recorded missionary journey and message about the word of God and the gospel of Christ. This is not a coincidence. This is the intentionality of an eternal Savior whose story is woven from the beginning of time. He existed before time. He is eternal. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We see this story woven from the very beginning through 1 Kings when Samaria even comes to be. God knew that those people would be hated. And he knew exactly where he would send his word first, to the least of these. Those that people would say were unredeemable. He would stretch open his arms and he would redeem them just as easily as those that work for him and the religious that think that they're doing everything right, and yet all it takes is to just receive him. Because the religious stone, the one carrying the message, but the rejected receive the message that Jesus died for. So I just want to invite us today, wherever we might be, wherever we might find ourselves, to receive that message of Christ. So with every eye closed, every head bowed, if you find yourself in that place, maybe it's you who have turned your back on God. Maybe it's you who have not lived up to the high calling in which He's called you to. Maybe it's you who have fallen away. Maybe you once walked with Him, but you are not walking with Him now. If that's you today, I want to give you an opportunity to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior because He has never stopped chasing after you. So if that's you, would you just raise your hands all over this room? Raise them high. There is no shame. Like the woman at the well, he is offering you a gift to receive Him as the true and living water. He is offering you an opportunity to walk with Him, to run with Him, to be used by Him, to carry the gospel to all those that you encounter. For you to say that I was once lost, but He found me in my broken place, in an unworthy place, in a disgraced place, and yet and still He loves me. So if you would, would everyone in this room just repeat this prayer after me? Father God, I thank you, Lord, for dying for me. I choose you, Lord. I receive your salvation. I declare that you are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, that you died, were buried, and resurrected for my sins, that I could be resurrected with you. I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. I say yes to you today. So I ask that you would forgive me of my sins. I turn away from them and I turn back to you. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Can we give God a shout of praise? So, with nobody moving in this room, because this is really important, because I know how difficult it is to sit in a room like this full of faith, but those that you desperately desire to walk with in this journey are not sitting with you. So I want to pray for you. If you have a family member or a friend, a spouse or a child that you are believing for their salvation, for them to get a glimpse of who Jesus is. We are a room full of faith this morning. Where two or more are gathered. There he is in our midst. So I'm gonna ask you to put up your hand. There is no shame. Every single one of us knows somebody we want to know Christ. And together we are gonna believe that Jesus is gonna come and our loved ones are gonna encounter God in a way they never have before. I want to pray for you this morning. Father God, I just thank you, Lord. I thank you, God, that we get to come together as a church family and intercede on behalf of those that we love. Just get that person on your mind right now. Lord, you know every person that we're thinking of. You know every mom, every dad, every husband. Every wife, every son, every daughter. You know every person, God, every single loved one. You know, you know the people that have turned their backs on you, who have yet to know you, you know how we long for them to receive you as their Lord, to get a glimpse of your goodness, to get a glimpse of your love, to have a glimpse of your grace and your mercy, God, to get a glimpse of you, your glory, your salvation, your goodness, how you stretch out your arms and you died for them, even those that do not yet know you, you love. So I pray, God, for every single person, every single son, every single daughter, every friend, every family member, every co-worker, every spouse. Lord, we come to you on their behalf and we ask that you would replace their hearts of stone with a heart of flesh, that your seeds would be sown into their lives, that they would receive you as their Lord, that they would know you as their God, that they would know you and that they would love you, that we would spend eternity with them, Lord. We plead, God, I ask these things according to your words. It says that those things that we ask in the name of your Son, it shall be yes and amen. And so I ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. We intercede. We ask you to intercede right now. I ask that that the things holding them back, that the scales would fall from their eyes, that the attacks of the enemy would be broken, that the strongholds would be stripped off of their lives. I ask God that you would move in their lives, that you would make it undeniable that you are the Christ, that you are the Messiah, that there is no other way but through you, Jesus. I ask God that you would move, that your word spirit would break out all over this earth, in the lives of our friends, in the lives of our family members. I ask God that you would move and have your way, that you would do miracles in their lives, that there would be testimonies of them seeing you face to face, encountering your presence, that your fire from heaven would fall on them, that they would turn, that they would turn from their ways, from the ways of the world, and turn back to you. Jesus, it is you and you alone. May we reflect you in their lives, God. Show us how to reflect you well, to love them despite our differences, to love them, despite the disappointments, to love them, despite the ways in which they walk right now, to reflect you, to go to your people who are yet to know you and reflect you, to declare you, God, not just through our words, but through the way that we live our lives. It's in these things that we ask, God, and in your name, Jesus the Christ, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the God who reigns above all, who is all, who can do all things. It's in your name that we pray. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.