Congratulations!

You are 75% the way through the book of Acts!

Check out the video invites by Jorge Munoz and Gary Krause to the Mission to Sydney Week of Spiritual Emphasis starting 10am Monday 27 June 2016.

 One of the things that I have noticed is that church planters like myself sometimes tend to be really determined and unwavering in the goals that we feel God has called us to achieve.  You can present to us all of the problems that you can see, the processes that should be followed and the other opportunities that may be coming up, but if a church planter is on a mission, there is sometimes no dissuading him or her.

 Paul was like that at times.  When he and his team dropped in to see Philip and his four single daughters that had the gift of prophecy—how awe-inspiring is that, by the way?  It reminds me of another young woman who received the gift of prophecy too… Anyway, back to the story—Paul is there in a highly-charged prophetic environment, and the Spirit of Jesus comes upon Agabus and he acts out a prophetic charade using Paul’s belt.  “The Spirit tells me that you are going to be imprisoned in Jerusalem,” Agabus prophecies.  Everyone else clearly gets the message—they are crying and begging Paul not to keep heading towards Jerusalem.

 Nup, Paul says.  You can’t stop me.  I’m ready to die to Christ.  But the Spirit was speaking through Agabus too, wasn’t he?  Was Paul being resolved, headstrong or foolhardy?

 Then the funny thing is that Paul does a complete backflip on the whole ceremonial law thing.  When he arrives in Jerusalem, the Christian leaders take him aside.  Hey Paul, they say, we are really concerned.  We know you are a good bloke, but there are some Jews here who are upset with you (raging mad, to be honest).  They think that you are undermining the entire Jewish system.  We have a solution for you.  Take these four guys…

 And Paul agrees!  How strange is that?  We know that he has said that “to the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law”.  Was he using that missional approach?  Or was he rushing into a compromising situation without really thinking about it?

 F.F. Bruce writes, “Therefore, in their naïveté, they put a proposal to him… The wisdom of Paul’s complying with the elders’ plan may well be doubted.”  

 Ellen White writes, “The brethren hoped that Paul, by following the course suggested, might give a decisive contradiction to the false reports concerning him. They assured him that the decision of the former council concerning the Gentile converts and the ceremonial law, still held good. But the advice now given was not consistent with that decision. The Spirit of God did not prompt this instruction; it was the fruit of cowardice… 

 “Paul realized that so long as many of the leading members of the church at Jerusalem should continue to cherish prejudice against him, they would work constantly to counteract his influence. He felt that if by any reasonable concession he could win them to the truth he would remove a great obstacle to the success of the gospel in other places. But he was not authorized of God to concede as much as they asked.

 “When we think of Paul’s great desire to be in harmony with his brethren, his tenderness toward the weak in the faith, his reverence for the apostles who had been with Christ, and for James, the brother of the Lord, and his purpose to become all things to all men so far as he could without sacrificing principle—when we think of all this, it is less surprising that he was constrained to deviate from the firm, decided course that he had hitherto followed. But instead of accomplishing the desired object, his efforts for conciliation only precipitated the crisis, hastened his predicted sufferings, and resulted in separating him from his brethren, depriving the church of one of its strongest pillars, and bringing sorrow to Christian hearts in every land.” AA pp404,405

 The great missional leader, Paul, heading down a path that God had not planned for him to go down.  Even the greatest leaders are still human, and as a result, Paul gets caught up into the eye of a religious tornado that threatens to pull him to pieces.

 BUT!  God can still work out His purposes even though makes an unwise choice like doing a backflip about the ceremonial law.  Even though he has been sucked into the vortex, he is about to catapulted towards the very centre of the Empire.

 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

 Thank You God that You can take headstrong and foolhardy church planters like myself and use us to Your glory and to write salvation history, using even our unwise decisions to do so!  You are an amazingly resourceful God!

 The book of Acts is drenched with the Holy Spirit.  Reading it is like taking time to play out in the tropical rain!  Read the full stories for today in:

 Acts 21 NIV
Acts of the Apostles “Paul’s Last Journey to Jerusalem”
Acts of the Apostles “Paul a Prisoner”

 Invite your friends to join this journey with you!  You can follow this journey on Facebook too.