Acts Devotional Week 9

June 24, 2012

Acts 16:16-24

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling.  While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”  She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.  But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.  When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.”  The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.  After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.  Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

Who sets people free?  Here we have a slave-girl and a prison.  The girl was a slave who made money for her owners.  She was enslaved to a spirit who controlled what she was able to see and speak.  She was not allowed to be who God created her to be.  In the name of Jesus, Paul and Silas freed her.  She found freedom in Jesus Christ.

Yet that freedom had a cost.  The girl’s owners lost a source of income.  They were upset so they decided to go after Paul and Silas.  All Paul and Silas were trying to do was go to a place to pray.  They were not seeking attention or trying to cause trouble.  Yet they find themselves seized, put on trial, stripped, beaten and put into prison.  In freeing a girl in Jesus’ name they found themselves in prison.

The work of the Lord can be difficult.  As God frees people from their prisons of sin and its consequences there is opposition.  Through Paul and Silas Jesus was changing the way the world worked.  Some just didn't like that.  A safe and tame message of salvation is fine, but when God changes things there is often resistance.  Ultimately, imprisonment could not stop God’s work (Acts 16:25-40).  Salvation spread and the world was changed.  God sets people free.  Will we accept that freedom or stand against it?  Will we be willing to make the sacrifice needed to set people free?

Devotional: A Father's Delight

June 17, 2012

Proverbs 3:11-12

My child, don’t reject the LORD’s discipline, and don’t be upset when he corrects you.  For the LORD corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.

Life comes with prosperity and adversity.  We honor the Lord in prosperity (Proverbs 3:9-10).  We rejoice when the bank account has enough in it, when we have all the food we need, when the house doesn't have some major problem that needs fixed, and when our health is good.  We praise God for those gifts.  How do we treat God when we face adversity?  What will we do when we aren't sure how the bills will be paid, where the next meal will come from, when the house needs major repairs, and when our health isn't what we want or need it to be?  Often this becomes a time of questioning.  We wonder if God really is as good as everyone claims Him to be.  We sometimes view God as the punisher who has brought this trouble to us for some reason we aren't even sure of.  I wonder, is this true?

How many of us have been disciplined?  How many of us have had to discipline a child (our own or others)?  Why do we do this?  Is it out of anger or some other emotion that wants to “get” that child for what they have done?  Probably not.  Is it simple obligation to a set of rules that lead us to think a child must act a certain way just because (seen and not heard)?  Probably not.  Discipline in its truest form comes from love.  It comes from a desire to see a child grow up healthy, wise, and safe.  Discipline is an act of protection.  Discipline is an act of love.

God is not in the business of creating adversity and suffering among His people.  Most often the adversity we face is birthed out of a sinful (separate from God) attitude or action.  No father forces a child to do something harmful and/or dangerous just to teach them a lesson, but a good father will use the wrongdoing of a child to instruct them on what is the right way.  This is discipline.  The wisdom of Proverbs says that the Father (God) delights in us (His children).  Because of this, He disciplines and corrects.  He uses our wrongdoing to show us the right path.  Instead of turning away from Him when adversity strikes, maybe we should turn towards Him and discover the embrace of love our Father offers us.

Acts Devotional Week 8

June 10, 2012

Acts 15:12-19

Everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.  When they had finished, James stood and said, “Brothers, listen to me.  Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself.  And this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted. As it is written:  ‘Afterward I will return and restore the fallen house of David.     I will rebuild its ruins and restore it, so that the rest of humanity might seek the LORD, including the Gentiles—all those I have called to be mine.  The LORD has spoken—he who made these things known so long ago.’  “And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.

Paul and Barnabas had completed their missionary journey.  It was successful wherever it went.  Many Jews and Gentiles had come to believe in Jesus Christ.  But they had faced opposition along the way.  Some tried to discredit them.  Others argued with them publically.  Still others got people agitated enough to attempt physical harm.  Paul is stoned during this journey and survived it.  Yet the message of Christ got through and now Paul is home.  Even at home there are questions about what to do with all these new believers.  Should they follow the old ways as practiced before or should we allow a new way of following Jesus to happen?

This is an age old question that follows believers every time God does a new or highly significant work.  What is the church to do when following God leads to places that don’t fit with what has been done before?  There is always resistance to change…even when it is clearly God at work.  We get comfortable in the pattern of how things are done.  Sometimes it’s hard to see how God can operate outside of that pattern.

This is what Paul and Barnabas are facing.  They are facing a council that is unsure about the changes God brought about through Paul’s work.  In that place, Peter and James stand up and declare that the old ways must change and the new believers not be given a difficult road to Christ.  They were right.  They still are.  If God is calling people we simply cannot let patterns and systems stand in His way.  It’s always been God’s Church and He should always be able to do as He sees fit in it.  May we never allow our natural resistance to change stand in the way of people coming to God.