Our Wednesday Evening Message for April 23, 2025

​

                                   "A Prayer of Forgiveness"

                                                 Text: Acts 7: 54-60

                                                                                                 

​Our Wednesday evening messages are focused on Bible teaching. My goal is to explain the text by comparing scripture with scripture. The method of my teaching is expository in nature with the attempt to explain each verse according to the context. I am a slave to the text. Wherever the text leads me that will be my focus. It is my goal that my congregation in our Wednesday evening service walk away understanding the Word of God as the Holy Spirit directs me as their pastor.

​

In this study, I walk you through the various prayers found in the Bible. There are actually 100 of these prayers beginning with the prayer of Abraham from the Book of Genesis to the prayer of the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation. We have been in this study since March of 2022.

​

In our study, we continue in the book of Acts as we looked at one of the prayers of one of the seven deacons of the early church, named Stephen. Now Stephen was not a preacher, nor a Sunday School teacher, nor an apostle, but just a simple laymen of the gospel. In Chapter 7, we are told he was controlled by the Holy Spirit. He was a man  who possessed faith, wisdom, and power doing great wonders and miracles before the people. He entered the synagogues to debate the elite Jewish leaders, and these elites were unable to resist his wisdom and the spirit that he spoke.  So, these leaders seized him to be tried at he highest Jewish court, the Sanhedrin. They found him guilty of blaspheming God and the law of Moses, and sentenced him to death by stoning. As Stephen is being stoned, he prays a prayer similar to our Lord when He was on the cross, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." After Stephen prayed this prayer, he fell asleep to be in the presence of his Lord.

 

 

 

I encourage you to listen to this message in it's entirety as I try to walk you through the meaning of this text. May this message encourage you as it did those who attended our morning service.

 

 

 

​

                                            Pastor Michael R. Martin

​

​

​

                                  ​

 

​

 

 

 

​