There really isn’t anything major that jumps out at me in this chapter, right until the end.  Right at the end, after Felix has heard the case and essentially has decided that he can’t justify killing Paul or the Jews, and can’t even seem to justify convicting Paul of any sort of crime, he leave Paul is a sort of sudo-prison; seemingly like a house-arrest type of thing.  But here is what I really honed in on this morning.  Felix comes to see Paul and to get more information from Paul about what he is teaching.  Paul gives him an account of his Christian testimony.  This puts Felix into an interesting position.  It is presumed that Felix actually came to see Paul because he has a sense that Paul was a well-to-do man, which we believe is true, and to see if he could extract a bride of some sort from him.  Instead, he got an invitation to faith.  Felix is staring into the face of a big decision.

We have talked about this idea that we never know what hangs in the balance of a decision regarding our faith...that God uses those decisions and those moments of faithfulness in ways that we would probably never have imagined.  Well, here is Felix, staring at the opportunity to try to extract a bride and some money from Paul, or he could actually accept Paul’s testimony.  The way this is written, it seems like Luke might be telling us that Felix at least paused in the face of this decision to consider both options.  Let’s just imagine he did for a moment, putting aside whether or not Luke actually eludes to that.

Imagine how different history might be if Felix had placed his faith in Christ right then and there, and freed Paul.  How different would history be?  This was a big moment.  The greatest evangelist in the history of the Christian faith is sitting there, a decision away from being sent back out into the world to continue teaching.  That’s amazing.  Of course, Felix decided not to decide...he didn’t want to put Paul back out on the streets for fear that there would be a real public uproar, for fear that the Jews would really turn against him, and he didn’t want to place his faith in Jesus and follow Paul’s teaching because it would cost him an opportunity at that bride money, along with all of the same issues relating to the Jews, and yet he knew he couldn’t kill Paul because there was no crime.  So he just left him there, and that’s how the chapter ends.

Today I am reminded of how much impact a single decision of faith can have on me, on the people around me, and on the world around me.  Felix had a choice, he had a chance to write himself into history on a positive note, and to have a HUGE impact on the world, for good.  He passed it by.  Today I pray that I would spot opportunities that come across my life, and that I would see them as opportunities since they are often felt as challenges.  I pray that I would have the faith to think bigger and to remember that my decisions of faith are often not nearly as private and personal as they feel in the moment.