The Greatest Hindrance

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

The sermon opens with a story. Williams had gone to preach for a church hungry for a move of God, poured himself out service after service, and felt everything locked up — people needing healing weren't leaving healed, people needing a touch weren't getting touched. So he prayed what sounded like a good prayer: Lord, show up, move in the sanctuary, let cancers be healed. And in that prayer meeting the conviction came: *Son, what are you praying? My Spirit is always moving. I'm omnipresent; where two or three are gathered in my name, I show up. My presence is not the problem.* People can sit in the same service, hear the same songs and the same sermon, and one feels God while the other has no clue he is in the house — Jacob's cry, "Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not."

The texts frame the investigation. Paul asks the Roman church, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" and lists the suspects: "tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Romans 8:35). To Galatia he writes of liberty not to be re-entangled (Galatians 5:1) and asks the same question in another form: "Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?" (Galatians 5:7). Williams works Paul's list honestly — tribulation is real trouble, distress is real anxiety, persecution really does arrive the moment you start living godly — and then springs the sermon's grammar: Paul asked for a *who*, and everything on the list is a *what*. Tribulation is a trial, a wind, a storm; distress is an emotional state. Not one of the seven is a person. And Paul's own conclusion is that none of them can separate: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life... nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God" (Romans 8:38-39).

So who is the who? Paul answers it one chapter earlier, in himself: "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing... I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me" (Romans 7:18-21). The greatest hindrance is not God, whose presence is not the problem; not the trial; not the spouse, the children, the pastor, or the past — it is me. Adam hid and blamed the woman God gave him; Eve blamed the serpent; but every man is drawn away of his own lust. It is pride that keeps people from praying for real — I don't want anybody to see me cry. The old Sunday-school song had it right: it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

The altar call follows the text exactly: nobody can stop your lips from moving but you, nobody can keep you in the pew but you, and nobody can run to the Deliverer for you but you. Let go of the grudge, the pain, the past — the pain is not the problem; me not forgiving is. Work out your own salvation: at the judgment you will not be able to blame anybody else.