How easily we forget that Holy Spirit was at work right throughout the Bible. He was not a new invention at Pentecost! Here we read that Holy Spirit was on Simeon and had given him an expectation that he would see the Saviour of the world before his own death.

During His time on earth, both before and after His resurrection, Jesus was always surprising people. Those who followed Him were constantly trying to understand who He really was, and were regularly surprised. Both by what He did and what He said. This continued even after He died!

Many sermons have been preached on why God would choose those who lapped the water with their tongues as a dog laps, and not the others. Were those who knelt not in a position of readiness to fight at any moment? Suffice it to say that God chose the army.

Just as the angel wrote to the church in Ephesus, they had lost their first love and had begun to follow idols, which were not doing anything for them, except taking their time, their money and their future! But God had not given up on His plans for His people.

Many of us have those moments when we know God might be asking us to do something which seems difficult, even impossible, and we dare to get out of the boat. But then a second thought tells us that it is impossible, and we take our eyes off the Saviour!

Life with Jesus could be exciting and scary all at the same time. This must have been one of the scariest surprises the disciples had in their time as His followers on the earth. As they rowed, they must have been pondering and discussing the surprise they had just experienced.

These verses are full of some of the biggest surprises in the Bible. The fact that the men were not burned, but their cords were. That they were walking around in the fire! Plus the appearance of God as a man, long before Jesus was born!!

But the God of Heaven was faithful to those who were faithful to Him, and He protected His children. He still does that today. We read that the soldiers who threw the men into the furnace died because of the intense heat. But those thrown into the fire remained unharmed!

Many people are thinking that God has gone to sleep, or fallen from His throne or is just not as capable as we had hoped He would be. Many other people are feeling as though church, (and consequently God) is irrelevant in this world, and are separating themselves from both.

The plan was to surprise them more than they could dare hope. On the fourth day He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. This was a forerunner of what Father God was going to do for His beloved Son, raising Him from the dead on the third day!