Facing the Storms: Trusting Jesus When Everything Falls Apart
In this message, Senior Pastor David Rose walks through Acts 4–5, where pressure rises, and obedience starts to cost something. The early church faces real opposition, and we see how God sustains His people through prayer, shared life, and courage shaped by the gospel.
These chapters show believers learning, sometimes stumbling, and still pressing forward because Christ is worth it. Here we see examples of what faith looks like when following Christ complicates life instead of simplifying it.
If you’re worn down, uncertain, or carrying doubts of your own, this passage meets you where you are. God does not abandon His people in the storm. He strengthens us, together, for faithfulness here and now.
Key Takeaways
- God challenges cultural power with the gospel. (Acts 4:1-22, 5:17-40)
- God emboldens His people through prayer. (4:23-31)
- God encourages His people through community. (Acts 4:32-37, 5:12-16, 5:41-42)
- God expects the church to be people of integrity. (Acts 5:1-11)
The Gospel
If you have questions about what it means to be a Christian, we would love to talk with you about it.
Reach outThe Gospel is good news because it steps into the mess and brokenness of real life, all the storms, pressures, and temptations that Acts 4–5 shows us. It isn’t just advice or a new spiritual program. It’s the story of what God has done for us in Christ, when we never could save ourselves.
Acts 4:12 makes it plain: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, lived the life of perfect obedience that we haven’t. He willingly died on the cross, taking the penalty for our sin—our pride, our dishonesty, our need for approval, our rebellion—and absorbing God’s just wrath so that we wouldn’t have to bear it ourselves. He was buried, but God raised Him from the dead, defeating the last enemy, death itself (see the early preaching in Acts 4:2, 10, 33).
That resurrection is the foundation for the apostles’ courage. When confronted, they said, “we cannot help but speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). The Spirit who raised Jesus is the same Spirit available for ordinary, trembling people who put their trust in Him. He makes dead people alive, gives us new hearts, and places us in a real family, the church, where we’re built up together and called not just to survive, but to shine with generous love (Acts 4:32–35).
Through repentance and faith, trusting in Christ alone, you are forgiven, adopted, and filled with hope that nothing (not even opposition or inward failure) can take away. The mission isn’t to clean ourselves up, but to receive, rest in, and respond to all that God has done in Christ. The risen Christ invites you: don’t settle for surface change, come and let Him change your life from the inside out, and join in the story He’s still telling through His people today.