How to Stay Strong When You Feel Weak

Philadelphia was a growing church.  They were doing some things OK.  The city was founded about 150 years before Jesus and was named Philadelphia because an early prominent leader had been so loyal to his brother that people had nicknamed him - “brother lover”.  So the Greek name combining the two ideas of ‘brother’ and ‘love’ came together to give us the name … Philadelphia.

The city was poised right at the crossroads of different cultures.  It was built to influence travellers and those who would come through that crossroads in Greek ideas and Greek thought.  This church also faced open hostility from a ‘sect’ of people who considered themselves to be a higher “level” of Christian. 

Jesus message to the Philadelphians, and to us, is that regardless of the culture, regardless of the increasing secularisation of the society, regardless of increasing anti-Christian sentiment, regardless of the opposition, regardless of the odds, God can do things through us, and through us as a church that are unstoppable.