The Central Moment

Anonymity can become God’s tool in our lives. Who we associate does make a difference. We tend to become like the people we spend the most time with, but that was not the Apostle Paul’s situation. After meeting Christ he stayed largely on his own until God had him take center stage in the ministry he had called him to.

What do we do with our pasts? Sometimes our pasts haunt us, sometimes we feel crippled by them, and sometimes they can make us wonder whether we have missed the call of God in our lives. But Paul confidently declared that none of those things have the final word because of the gospel’s power.

People-pleasing is a huge trap. Whether it be juvenile peer pressure, or the temptation to compromise our ethics in order to please a boss, or caving into worldliness to make a spouse happy -- if we are not careful we can end up in the same place that Jesus’ critics ended up. They loved the approval of people more than the approval of God.

Let the gospel be the gospel. That was the Apostle Paul’s plea in his letter to the Galatian believers. Don’t sophisticate it, don’t add to it, don’t pervert it -- in short, don’t change it! May we hear that same warning 2000 years later!

Galatians is one of the earliest letters that we have from the Apostle Paul. Located in what is now central Turkey, the Galatian believers were being influenced by teachings and priorities that took the focus off Jesus. It’s the same danger that Christ’s church faces today.

In the western world, we may see relatively little persecution for our faith in Jesus… but Satan has another strategy. One to distract us and water down our faith. So may we look to the example of Pergamum as we remain faithful to Jesus.

We’d all prefer God to lead us through open doors, but sometimes he uses closed doors, instead, to reposition us for his plans. That was the case for Paul, and it brought about the spread of the gospel throughout Europe. So remember, our delays are not his delays, and our detours are not his detours.

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was the central church for the Christian world for nearly 1000 years, and it set the bar high for the magnificent cathedrals to come. But as impressive as these buildings are, God’s heart is to find a people to dwell among, not a structure.

The kingdoms of the world come and go... Byzantium became Constantinople, which became Istanbul. But God's Kingdom will never end, and we have access to it if we'll just commit our lives and our ways to him.

As The Central Moment comes to you from Turkey, we're reminded of the significance of Paul's missionary journeys, and the good news of Jesus' revolutionary message that relentlessly invaded our world.