Litchfield Church of the Nazarene Podcast

Acts: To the Ends of the Earth - When I Need a Miracle - Pastor Jon Stoe

Two apostles. Two prison cells. Two prayers for a miracle. James got the sword. Peter walked out free in the middle of the night, chains on the ground, past sixteen soldiers, without anyone waking up. Same God. Same church praying. Completely different outcomes. In this message from Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe goes straight at one of the hardest questions in the Christian life: why does God do miracles for some people and not for others? Jon doesn't flinch from the tension. He walks through Acts 11 and 12, where the early church loses Stephen and James to execution while Peter gets a jailbreak by angel, and he refuses to offer a formula, because Scripture doesn't offer one. There's no passcode. No bargain. No measure of faith that forces God's hand. What he finds instead is something more honest and ultimately more comforting: miracles are at God's discretion to accomplish God's purposes, and the people who saw the most miracles in history still faced unpredictability, loss, and unanswered prayers. Their faith held anyway, because it was anchored to what God had already done, not to what they hoped he might do next. If you're sitting in a season where you need God to do what only God can do, this one is for you. Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com [https://www.litchfieldnaz.com/].

Acts: To the Ends of the Earth - An Assignment in the Desert - Pastor Jon Stoe

Philip was in the middle of a revival. People were getting saved all over Samaria, the kind of ministry most pastors only dream about. And right in the middle of it, God told him to leave. Go south, to a desert road in the middle of nowhere, where there was nobody. In part eight of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe opens with his own version of that story, a phone call in 2021 that sent him and his wife to Valley City, North Dakota, a place he's quick to say is not a vacation destination. They went anyway. The first month, they baptized 21 people. That's the thread Jon pulls through this message. When we're willing to go, God shows up. He walks through the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official from Acts 8, a divine appointment on an empty road that opened the gospel to an entire region of Africa, and lands on three things Philip got right: he was attentive, he was available, and he was willing to be a friend. Jon's challenge is personal and direct. God isn't just looking for people to fill a building. He's looking for people who will leave the crowd to go after one. And the question Jon leaves hanging is the one worth sitting with: are you available? Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com [https://www.litchfieldnaz.com/].

Acts: To the Ends of the Earth - The Wonder of the Good News - Pastor Jon Stoe

He was the most dangerous man in the early church, and not in a good way. Saul of Tarsus spent three years hunting down followers of Jesus, dragging men and women out of their homes, throwing them in prison, and casting his vote when they were executed. He wasn't a fringe character. He was educated, well-connected, and absolutely convinced he was doing God's work. He was also the last person anyone expected Jesus to recruit. In part seven of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe traces the conversion and life of the Apostle Paul from that blinding encounter on the road to Damascus all the way to a Roman prison cell, where Paul is chained like a criminal, writing letters that would eventually become half the New Testament. Jon uses Paul's story to surface something the modern church has quietly lost: the awe and wonder of what the gospel actually is. Paul never lost it. He called himself the worst of sinners and spent the rest of his life staggered by the fact that Jesus would forgive someone like him. Jon's question for the rest of us is simple and a little uncomfortable: when did we stop being staggered by that? Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com [https://www.litchfieldnaz.com/].

Acts: To the Ends of the Earth - Counting the Cost - Pastor Jon Stoe

Nobody told you it was going to cost you something to follow Jesus. Or if they did, you probably didn't believe them. In part six of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth, Lead Pastor Jon Stoe goes somewhere most sermons avoid: the real price of being a disciple. Not just inconvenience or social awkwardness, but the kind of cost the early church actually paid. Reputation. Relationships. Safety. Stephen, one of the brightest preachers in the early church, got stoned to death. The apostles got beaten and thrown in jail. And then went right back out and kept talking about Jesus. Jon traces how the persecution that broke out in Jerusalem after Stephen's death didn't kill the movement. It scattered it. Judea, Samaria, and eventually the ends of the earth, which is exactly what Jesus said would happen. Along the way Jon pulls from Peter's letters to Christians living under Nero's Rome, where "fiery ordeal" wasn't a metaphor. The early believers rejoiced through it all, not because they were naive, but because they had counted the cost before it happened and decided Jesus was worth it. This message asks whether we've done the same. Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com [https://www.litchfieldnaz.com/].

Acts: To the Ends of the Earth - United Front - Pastor Jon Stoe

Jon Stoe opens this one with a story about a former gang member named Gerber Gomez, a young man from Guatemala who survived a brutal initiation, joined a gang in Chicago for the sense of family it offered, and then had his life turned completely around by a girl at his locker who refused to stop telling him that Jesus loved him. It's a story about belonging and what people will risk to find it. And it sets up the central question of part five of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth perfectly: what would the church look like if it offered that same kind of all-in, show-up-at-any-hour community? Jon traces the early church's unity through Acts 2 and 4, through the creation account in Genesis, and all the way into Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, where Jesus prays not just for his disciples but for every future believer, that they would be one with each other the same way the Father and Son are one. That's not a low bar. Jon is honest about what gets in the way, including politics, division, and the enemy who benefits every time the church turns on itself. But he lands in a place of real hope. Unity, he says, is what makes the church's message believable to a watching world. And Jesus already prayed for it. Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com [https://www.litchfieldnaz.com/].