From Brokenness to Wholeness, The Miraculous Power of Christ | March 8, 2026

Sermon number twenty-six shifted the focus from Saul's bold, public ministry to two much quieter stories of ordinary need, and Pastor Justin walked through Acts 9:32-43 to show Peter's ministry among hurting people in Lydda and Joppa. Peter finds Aeneas, a man bedridden and paralyzed for eight years, and simply announces that Jesus Christ heals him, commanding him to rise and make his bed. Pastor Justin's first point was that Jesus meets us in our brokenness, and he anchored it in three stories rather than one.

The Setup: Two Ordinary Miracles

The first was John 8:1-11, the woman caught in adultery, dragged before Jesus in her shame by scribes and Pharisees looking for a legal trap. Jesus refused to condemn her while also refusing to excuse her sin, telling her to go and sin no more only after every accuser had walked away convicted by their own conscience. The second was King David's affair with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11, and Pastor Justin did not soften the account, naming plainly that David used his power as king to take advantage of her and then arranged her husband Uriah's death to cover his sin. When the prophet Nathan confronted David with the simple accusation, you are that man, the mask finally came off, and Psalm 51 became David's honest, excuse-free response, have mercy on me, create in me a clean heart.

Pastor Justin's point was that our worst moments do not have to be our final identity if we let God meet us there, the same way he met David at his lowest, most shameful chapter rather than at his highlight reel. That set up the transition back to Aeneas and to Tabitha in Joppa, a beloved disciple full of good works who dies and is mourned by widows she had faithfully served, until Peter kneels, prays, and calls her back to life in front of them.

The second point of the sermon was that Jesus works through ordinary people to bring hope and healing. Pastor Justin reminded the congregation that Peter himself was an unremarkable, working-class fisherman who denied Jesus three times and often missed the point entirely until after the resurrection, yet God used him anyway. He told the story of Maggie sensing a prompting to pray for a suffering woman at a women's group gathering and simply obeying, and he used the illustration of the 1871 Chicago fire, started by one small oil lamp kicked over in a barn, to picture how one surrendered, ordinary life, however small it feels, can ignite far beyond itself when touched by the fire of God.

The third point, that when the broken are restored whole communities see and believe, was grounded in a real story from the congregation, a single mother named Samaya who serves faithfully at church and shares her testimony of transformation with coworkers at a Waffle House job while riding the bus for hours just to get there. Pastor Justin used her story to show that God's power to make broken things whole remains one of the clearest evangelistic tools the church has, exactly as it was when Aeneas and Tabitha's healings led directly to more people believing in the Lord.

This Week's Application

So this week, is there an area of brokenness in your own life, physical, relational, or the kind of secret sin David carried, that you have stopped bringing to Jesus because you have quietly decided it is too far gone for him to touch? We would love for you to join us this Sunday as we continue walking through Acts together.