Well, if the book of Acts proves anything, it proves that Jesus Christ is living and

raining and orchestrating everything for the flourishing of his bride, the church.

This means that Jesus is not dead, and he is not absent, and he is certainly not boring

or predictable.

Jesus can turn any circumstance around.

Here's how John Piper explained it in a 1991 sermon on the conversion of Paul.

Now what I want to happen in this message is that your heart would be encouraged from

the truth in this text that Jesus is alive and that he turns things around.

That's the phrase I want you to take away.

Deepness turns things around, or another way to put it would be I want you to go away

with a kind of open-ended expectancy about your heart, your mind, your personality,

your family, your work, your world, your city, your school, that Jesus turns things around.

That believing in the Jesus of the book of Acts means believing that he breaks in and

turns things around.

I think one of the most debilitating, one of the most devastating feelings in the human

heart is fatalism.

And what I mean by that big word fatalism is that it'll never change.

I won't ever change, she won't ever change, my kids won't ever change, my job won't

ever change, the city won't ever change, school won't ever change, the world won't ever

change, abortion won't ever change.

We're stuck with it, the powers are too deeply entrenched, we're just going to have to

get it out, it ain't going to change, that's fatalism.

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