Two apostles. Two prison cells. Two prayers for a miracle. James got the sword. Peter walked out free in the middle of the night, chains on the ground, past sixteen soldiers, without anyone waking up. Same God. Same church praying. Completely different outcomes. In this message from Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe goes straight at one of the hardest questions in the Christian life: why does God do miracles for some people and not for others?

Jon doesn't flinch from the tension. He walks through Acts 11 and 12, where the early church loses Stephen and James to execution while Peter gets a jailbreak by angel, and he refuses to offer a formula, because Scripture doesn't offer one. There's no passcode. No bargain. No measure of faith that forces God's hand. What he finds instead is something more honest and ultimately more comforting: miracles are at God's discretion to accomplish God's purposes, and the people who saw the most miracles in history still faced unpredictability, loss, and unanswered prayers. Their faith held anyway, because it was anchored to what God had already done, not to what they hoped he might do next. If you're sitting in a season where you need God to do what only God can do, this one is for you.

Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com.

Philip was in the middle of a revival. People were getting saved all over Samaria, the kind of ministry most pastors only dream about. And right in the middle of it, God told him to leave. Go south, to a desert road in the middle of nowhere, where there was nobody. In part eight of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe opens with his own version of that story, a phone call in 2021 that sent him and his wife to Valley City, North Dakota, a place he's quick to say is not a vacation destination. They went anyway. The first month, they baptized 21 people.

That's the thread Jon pulls through this message. When we're willing to go, God shows up. He walks through the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official from Acts 8, a divine appointment on an empty road that opened the gospel to an entire region of Africa, and lands on three things Philip got right: he was attentive, he was available, and he was willing to be a friend. Jon's challenge is personal and direct. God isn't just looking for people to fill a building. He's looking for people who will leave the crowd to go after one. And the question Jon leaves hanging is the one worth sitting with: are you available?

Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com.

He was the most dangerous man in the early church, and not in a good way. Saul of Tarsus spent three years hunting down followers of Jesus, dragging men and women out of their homes, throwing them in prison, and casting his vote when they were executed. He wasn't a fringe character. He was educated, well-connected, and absolutely convinced he was doing God's work. He was also the last person anyone expected Jesus to recruit.

In part seven of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe traces the conversion and life of the Apostle Paul from that blinding encounter on the road to Damascus all the way to a Roman prison cell, where Paul is chained like a criminal, writing letters that would eventually become half the New Testament. Jon uses Paul's story to surface something the modern church has quietly lost: the awe and wonder of what the gospel actually is. Paul never lost it. He called himself the worst of sinners and spent the rest of his life staggered by the fact that Jesus would forgive someone like him. Jon's question for the rest of us is simple and a little uncomfortable: when did we stop being staggered by that?

Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com.