Welcome to the in touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, May 27th.

Are you growing in your faith and moving forward in maturity?

Today's podcast begins a series titled The Path of Spiritual Maturity.

That opens with a clear explanation of salvation as the necessary first step.

Do you remember the first time your first child took their first step?

Oh, you called your friends and your family and you just said it's wonderful.

It's just so awesome that they've taken their first step and it was all just beautiful.

And next thing you knew, something wrong.

They were into everything.

They were into this, into that, and everything.

So the whole attitude change. But that's all right.

There was the beginning of a whole new life of them.

And there's the beginning of a whole new life

for those who take another first step.

And the title of this message is the first step.

And if you'll turn to the 16th chapter of Acts,

and just give you a little background of what's happening here, Paul and Salas are on their second missionary journey,

and so they got thrown in jail.

Thrown in jail, their feet were in the stalks, and they had been beaten with rods. Now, we think beaten with a whip would be something, but beaten with rods, and it was against the law to beat any Roman

citizen with rods and put them in jail without some real true real reason to do so.

So as a result the scripture says, verse 25 of the 16th chapter.

But about midnight Paul and Salas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God and the prisoners were listening to them.

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