Thrive In Adversity - Acts 4:1-22

When Everything Goes Wrong and You Are Exactly Where You Should Be

The early church had barely got started when things began going sideways. People were being healed, thousands were coming to faith, and the religious authorities were getting nervous. Their solution was straightforward: arrest Peter and John, drag them before the ruling council, and shut this whole thing down.

James Sloan walked through Acts 4:1-22 at Crowd Church with the calm authority of someone who has seen a few difficult situations himself. As the leader of a charity working with vulnerable people, he brought a grounded, practical lens to a passage that could easily feel remote and historical.

The Setup

The context matters. Peter and John have just healed a man who had been disabled since birth — the same miracle that sparked the events we looked at in previous weeks. The man is up and walking, the crowd is amazed, and Peter has used the moment to preach about Jesus.

The religious elite are not impressed. They have Peter and John arrested, thrown into jail overnight, and then hauled before the Sanhedrin — the full assembly of religious leaders — for questioning. The question they ask is pointed: "By what power or what name did you do this?"

As James observed, "That is effectively creating the perfect opportunity to share the gospel."

And Peter does not waste it.

Filled with the Holy Spirit

The first thing James highlighted was what happened inside Peter in that moment. Verse 8 says Peter was "filled with the Holy Spirit" before he spoke. This was not a man reciting a well-rehearsed argument. He was speaking words he believed the Spirit was giving him.

James shared a personal story that brought this to life. He had recently gone to court to argue a housing benefit case on behalf of one of his charity's tenants. He spent an hour preparing his argument, going through pages of evidence, working out how to present it all to the judge.

"And then I stopped and had some prayer time," he said. "And I just really felt strongly to say, effectively we didn't have an argument, and that we were just a small charity, and we made a mistake on a bit of paperwork."

He went to court and said exactly that. The judge was "very condescending, a little bit rude," and threw the case out.

"I felt really disappointed," James admitted. "I felt God had given me this strategy that was gonna bring this giant down with these simple words."

But on reflection, he realised something important: "It wasn't about winning the case. It's doing what I felt the Holy Spirit called me to do." Sometimes obedience does not come with the outcome we hoped for. And that is alright.

The Faith of Ordinary People

The second thing James pulled from the text was the disciples' faith. When Peter declared that "salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved," he was not hedging his bets. He was standing in front of the people who could decide his fate and speaking with total confidence.

What struck the Sanhedrin was not the theological argument. It was something else entirely. "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realised that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus."

James loved that line. "I can certainly resonate with that. I often feel like an unschooled, ordinary man at times. But the only qualification that we need is faith."

He connected this to his work leading a charity, where one of their core values is being "faith motivated." It sounds great on a poster, he admitted, but living it out is another matter. "How are we gonna employ staff and manage volunteers based on faith? How are we gonna make key decisions around partnerships and strategy and vision based on our faith?"

He shared a recent example where a challenge arose and he felt God telling him simply to wait. Two weeks of waiting — which, for an action-oriented leader, felt like an eternity. Then a solution appeared out of nowhere. "We wouldn't have noticed it if we'd been busy responding in our own strength."

"Faith is like a muscle," he said. "It needs exercise."

Courage in the Face of Everything

The third quality James identified in the disciples was courage. When told to stop speaking about Jesus, Peter and John replied: "We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

That is not careful diplomacy. That is people who have been so fundamentally changed that silence is simply not an option.

James shared a deeply personal story about his friend Brian, who was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour in 2022. Brian chose not to pursue invasive treatment and instead spent his final months reading scripture, writing it out, and sending notes to friends about his faith and his hope in Jesus.

"He had courage in the face of adversity. He knew death was coming, but he wasn't afraid of it. He decided to use the months he had left on this earth to share his hope in Jesus."

At Brian's funeral, people who did not attend church said: "If we did, this is the kind of church we would want to be part of."

James also shared about Pastor Alexander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who left a career in banking to plant churches in rebel-held territory. Held at knifepoint, travelling on terrible roads, caring for eight children — and yet undeterred. He has now planted fourteen churches and led hundreds of people to faith.

The Testing Produces Something

James closed with James 1:2-4: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance."

The promise at the end of that passage is extraordinary: "Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Not lacking anything. That is the result of going through the hard stuff with God rather than around it.

In Conversation Street, Matt Edmundson picked up on this theme and ran with it. He pointed out that Peter's transformation from ear-chopping denier to bold evangelist is itself evidence for the resurrection. "Just a few weeks later, he's actually standing up to the whole religious establishment. What brought this transformation?"

Dan Orange noted that even obedience does not always come with a comfortable outcome, referencing James's court story. "Sometimes we do have to do stuff and we may never know if it's had the impact. But perhaps it's just for us. It's just obedience."

Where Are You in This Story?

The disciples had the Holy Spirit. They had faith. They had courage. None of those things insulated them from difficulty. They still got arrested. They still faced threats. They still had to stand in front of powerful people and give account of themselves.

But they came through it. And what they came through produced something that could not have been produced any other way.

As James put it: "I don't know where you are today and what situations you're facing, but I can encourage you from this text that God is with you. God is walking with you in it. And maybe all you have to do is take some time to listen and hear what God might be saying."

Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is not to fight harder, but to stop and listen.