The Daily Devo with Steve

Today shows us a great truth about faith as a Christian, and about the journey we tall take in our spiritual development.  Paul is preaching and teaching these folks and everything is going well, and then this silversmith realizes that this is going to change everything for him - the majority of his income is derived from making idols for worship, idols for their god Artemis.  And upon realizing this, he starts to create an up-roar to try to save his way of life.  Everyone follows, and Luke records in several instances that the people were in a state of confusion.  Why were they confused?  It seems apparent that their confusion comes from a tension that they feel, and that I think we all feel at some point in our spiritual journey - it is a tension between a feeling of safety and a feeling of calling.  It is a tension between comfort and growth.

Here is the thing, sometimes we are going to be called out of our comfort, of our own free will, to follow where God wants to lead us.  Sometimes God forces us into a mode of growth, whether it is by way of a positive or a negative life event, a season of struggle or a season of success; but sometimes (at least in my experience) we feel more of a subtle tug from God, an invitation to willingly take a step in His direction.  Sometimes I think He wants to see how faith-filled we are by lobbing something out there and testing whether or not we’ll respond.   In my experience, that is the time that we find out ‘whose’ we really are...when we find out whose agenda we really value.

I know I have failed that test many times.  I know I have fallen on my face many times.  I also know, from experience, that positive responses to those nudges leads to a heightened sensitivity to God’s calling; said another way, when I respond to the most obvious opportunities, my spiritual muscles develop, my ability to recognize God’s presence grows, and I tend to see more if His work in my life.  I tend to start to notice His nudges a little better.

Today’s reading reminds me how NOT to respond - Demetrius goes on offense against God.  That is the worst choice.  I am a simple person, so I kind of picture this like a multiple-choice deal, where we have (A) as ‘reject God’s calling and go on offense against Him, (B) as pause, listen, and look for some more clarifying signals, and (C) just go all-in.  I would say that, at a minimum, we should be working to move from (A) to (B) in our lives...that when we feel a nudge, we need to start by trying to catch ourselves before we react from our gut and just pause, pray, and sit with that nudge for a bit - waiting to see if God will give us some clarity.

And that’s my prayer today...that I would have the presence of mind to stop, to wait, to take a deep breath when I feel a little nudge in the back of my mind about a decision I am about to make, and to invite God into that decision, allowing a little time to see if/how God might speak into my life.  In doing so, I hope to train myself to do THAT reflexively, and that I would really God’s presence deepening in my life.

In today’s reading, Luke is sort of cleaning up some loose ends and connecting some dots for us before we move on to Paul’s work in his return to Ephesus in the next chapter.  What struck me this morning was the little information about this disciple Apollos at the end of the chapter, who was working in Ephesus between Paul’s visits.  And, it really isn’t as much Luke’s narrative that jumped out at me as it was the scholarship in the study Bible.  Apparently there are people that are really struggling to explain how someone like Apollos could have received the Holy Spirit, as Luke is suggesting, yet only have heard John’s message - which Luke states in in verse 25.

Maybe I am thinking too simply on this, but this doesn’t really bother me.  We know that Apollos is from Alexandria, which is a center for education and philosophy, and was actually a place where a Jewish philosopher named Philo lived and worked.  As a Jew, Apollos was well-versed in the scriptures, no doubt.  Being from Alexandria, it is certainly possible (and likely) that he would have had some kind of training, whether formal or informal, from Philo as well.  So, we are talking about a competent religious person.  In fact, Apollos could kind of be compared to Paul in that regard.

And, we are told that Priscilla and Aquila take him aside and fill in the blanks of his faith for him, giving him the information about Jesus - His death, resurrection, and ascension.  At this point is when we are typically going to grant the assumption that he can receive the Holy Spirit, after he’s understood to have believed this information; meaning, he has to have received this information.  If he hasn’t gotten the information, these writers are hung up on how Luke says he can have the Holy Spirit with him.  Luke doesn’t fill in that blank for us.

I think we have to be careful here - this is where I think the church can start to get itself into a little trouble if it isn’t careful.  First off, we can’t and don’t know everything about this situation, obviously.  So, however we go about filling in the blanks, we are guessing - we have to recognize that.  Secondly, if God is the creator of the world and of communication and of this manuscript, and we don’t have a piece of information, we can assume it isn’t an error of omission (in my opinion); it is likely that God just didn’t give us this information because it isn’t important to the point He is making.  Thirdly, given the contextual detail we have been provided in so many places, and given the way these narratives are all inter-woven with historical findings so intricately, I think we must start with the assumption that there are just pieces of information that we don’t have, that should we have them, we’d have no problems answering unknowns questions.  Lastly - we must remember to not “miss the forest for the trees” here; Luke is (I think) just trying to communicate that God has been working in Ephesus even when Paul has been away - God was building the church, His church, and was furthering the cause to which Paul has been called, even while Paul was away.

Today’s reading reminds me that we can take scripture study down a rabbit hole, and sometimes that’s fine.  But, when we do, we must be humble enough to throw our hands up in the end, and to admit that we are speculating.  We much assume God has given us everything that we need to find Him, to know Him, and to experience Him.  And we must be careful as we read NOT to miss the bigger picture - God’s church, the movement called ‘the way’, was spreading at an unstoppable pace, and it was gathering momentum that was overcoming all sorts of formidable challenges.  God was doing what God wanted to do...and it is still that way today; thank you God!

This is another one of the big parts of the story in Luke’s Acts...this is a fantastic scene.  Paul places himself in center of a philosophical debate with some local philosophers, different from the local religious leaders.  This is an important distinction because these philosophers were seeking truth, and they didn’t have anything to protect...they just wanted to learn and to grow.  That’s a great frame of mind in which to exist, especially when juxtaposed against the religious leaders who didn’t want the truth, they just wanted to protect their power.  And so Paul is teaching things around the community and he shows up where these men are meeting and they realize that he is the one teaching these things so they ask him to tell them what he’s telling everyone else around the community.  And here is how he starts:

22 “So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything...” and Paul goes on; but the thing that has always stood out to me is this alter to the unknown god.  This sounds a lot like the prayer that we’ve all prayed at some point, before we became a Christian, and that many non-Christians pray in moments of great distress, “God, if you are out there, if you are real, I hope you can hear this...”.

These philosophers were just like us.  They are just like me.  They are just like you.  They want to know that there is some kind of a grand order in this crazy world.  They believe, deep down, that there is some kind of a plan unfolding in this world.  They want to believe there is a purpose in their pain, a reason for their life, and just in case they got it wrong and hadn’t identified the right god, they put an extra alter in place where they could say, should they figure out who that god is, “Oop, there you go, we knew you were there all along, but we didn’t know your name...that’s your spot right there!”.

There is a little of that in all of us.  We want to believe God is weaving a story to redeems our struggles and our victories, we want to believe our lives have a purpose.  Paul is leveraging that curiosity as a way to invite these folks to examine his claims.  And then, he shifts and instead of giving them a bunch of philosophical content, he drops the resurrection on them.  He cuts straight to the crux of the matter.

I love this because it reminds me that, as Christians, and as a part of our quest to be in the world in the sense that we should be using our influence and our gifts as a means to further God’s kingdom, we should continue to develop our tools for evangelism.  Paul clearly has a gift to meet people where they are, to read the situation and to speak into that situation powerfully.  We should all develop some of those skills.  In the same way, some people have a lot deeper talent in other areas of ministry, and they should develop those skills as well.  But we all can learn to be more like a chameleon from Paul, even if we know we won’t ever has his depth of skill in it.

Verses 16 through 24, which started the reading today, are pretty funny to me.  I read them as i they are almost a classic comedy movie with someone like Chevy Chase in it.  This first is a fortune tell as a source of income to this family, and she is a slave to them apparently.  Her ability is described as a “spirit of divination”, which literally meant ‘a spirit, a Python’, which can actually also be translated into what we call a ‘ventriloquist’.  To me, that’s a little funny...and Luke tells us that she annoys Paul because she keeps drawing attention to he and his ministry group, of which Luke is a member, and so Paul realizes that she actually does have an evil spirit of some sort in her and he just calls this demon our of her when it gets to a point when he doesn’t want to put up with it any longer.  Then this slave girl’s utility to this family is gone...so the family gets mad and gets the leaders of the community to come in and arrest Paul and his posse.  Just classic.

After being arrest, this group gets put in jail and God sets up their rescue, but instead of leaving when the opportunity came, Paul seizes the moment and witnesses to the jailer.  Then Paul even has the presence of mind to realize that he is a Roman citizen and is being held illegally, so he stays in jail to force these leaders to come apologize and let him out - turning out down not only the invitation to leave in the cover of night from God, but turning down an invitation to leave quietly and un-noticed by these leaders...but Paul wanted it to be a more public scene for the release; he wanted to clear the his name and, based on what we know about Paul, to clear the name of the church.  Paul didn’t want the reputational damage that this could potentially impose on the early church.

For me, as am reading this, I am struck by the poise of Paul.  He not only trusts God, but he is able to get a sense as to where God is trying to take him and to leverage his understanding of philosophy, Judaism,  and the law for God’s work.  He had the presence of mind, in the midst of a jail cell, the continue God’s work, and to resist the easy way out when he realized that there was more at stake than his comfort.  That’s awesome.  That’s a great example.  It reminds me to think about this question and prayer, “God your will, not my will, be done - please help me see what that looks like in my life today.”  That’s a great prayer to ask today.

This chapter starts off by immediately illustrating what we discussed in our last reading, and what the Jewish Council taught - that our lives should be purposed to gain influence for God’s sake.  Here, Paul has Timothy circumcised, and he tells us that it is for the reason that the Jews in these places they were going were circumcised, and we would presume that there were other practices that Paul and Timothy adopted in order to not lose influence with them.  Timothy’s example shouldn’t be seen as an example in terms of the circumcision, but in terms of the example of how to position yourself for maximum influence.

A subtle thing that happens in verse 10 in today’s reading is the word ‘we’ pops up.  This is the first time we see this, and then we see it for the remainder of Acts; this should indicate to us that the author, Luke, presumably was personally with this ministry group from this point forward and is writing about events he personally witnessed.  Then, we see Paul converting this female merchant, who was presumably a reasonably wealthy women is she was selling purple goods, to a faith in Jesus.

The big takeaway for me, and the thing that sticks out to me this morning, is how responsive Paul is to how he is being led by the Holy Spirit.  A couple of times we see a push and pull from the Holy Spirit, telling him to go here, and not to go there.  And we see Paul responding to this and following God’s lead.

It is a great reminder for me today to listen, to create space and margin in my life where I CAN listen, and to be courageous enough to follow where God leads me.  In Paul’s case, given the influence and the reputation he was no doubt building, it would have been very easy to start to listen less and guide himself more.  It would have been easy to start minimizing God’s voice and God’s influence as Paul was getting more and more powerful.  I think that’s the trap that we often fall into; or at least I know that’s true for me.  As I get some success, I feel less and less dependent on God.  Paul gives us a great example that leaning on God should be a constant.  In fact, in tomorrow’s reading, we will see the fruit of Paul’s faithfulness in action.

That’s my prayer today though - that would be dependent on God today; and that I would hear Him today, as a create just a little extra time and space to pray this morning specifically for that purpose.

The Council accepts James’ and Paul’s advice and removes the requirement of circumcision and adherence to the entire Mosaic Law from the requirements for joining the church.  And that a marker in history...the moment the church ‘got it’.  Faith was officially by Grace alone, adopted as part of the church’s operating system.  This really was a huge moment.

This idea penetrates the rest of Paul’s letters, and it is all over James’ letter as well.  It is this idea that the way we live is a response to the Grace we’ve received.  It is a monumental shift from the faith that preceded it.  Instead of living according to God’s Law in order that God would extend us His Grace, the church has now been taught by Jesus that the new deal, the New Testament, is that we would receive Grace and that we would live according to God’s will in response to that Grace.  We are to abstain from sacrificing to idols because that kind of sacrifice points people away from God.  We are to avoid eating from what the Old Testament calls unclean animals, not necessarily because this will keep God from accepting you, but because there are plenty that hold to this practice still and our goal is to gain influence over them and to bring them into relationship with God, and eating unclean animals takes that possibility off of the table.  We are to remain sexually pure not because God can’t forgive it, but because sexual sin has a direct physical impact on another person, it is a sin of two.  It also breaks our ability to experience desire for the right person, our spouse (or future spouse).  It hinders our ability to feel loved as well.  Sexual sin is a particularly insidious sin.

From this point on, when we are taught about how to behave as Christians, it isn’t about the relationship with God as much as it is about our relationship with others.  Now, for sure, sin typically hurts our ability to feel worthy of God’s love, and it hinders our ability to experience God’s Grace.  But, the real focus of the majority of the teaching from here on out in scripture relates to how sin breaks relationship, and most often it is relationship with others.

Let me say it this way - before this point in time, the purpose of our spiritual discipline was to gain God’s favor.  From this point forward, the point of our spiritual discipline is to experience a deeper relationship with God and with the people in our lives.

This is a very exciting moment for the church.  Today I am praying that I would be motivated by this idea, that I would be encouraged to love as a response to being truly set free.  For me, since I am typically harder on myself than I ever am on others, I really pray that I would begin to learn to see myself as God sees me; that I would forgive myself as God forgives me; that I would love myself as God loves me.

Look at what James says at the end of yesterday’s reading:

19 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, 20 but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. 21 For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

It is ‘his judgement’ that we shouldn’t make it hard for people to come to Jesus.  At the same time, we should encourage people to abstain from some of these things like idols, sexual immorality, unclean foods, and from blood.   Now, what we lose in this is something that Paul comes back to over and over again, and that James gets at in his own writing, and that is that these are encouragements, not ultimatums.  These aren’t a way to measure people for judgement by the church.  The reason these are suggested is for the benefit of those around the believer...we want the people around the believer, you and me, to not feel hindered as they come to Jesus.  We want them to be drawn to Jesus.  A person guilted into faith is a person that creates a spiritual foundation on sand...because guilt is a by-product of realizing you don’t measure up...and God isn’t measuring anything.

How inviting is my life?  Do people look at my life and see a joy that is desirable?  In the midst of pain, is there an element of peace that they look at and want to emulate?  When I suffer, do I suffer well?  When I win, do I do it well?  My life should be a reflection of what’s going on in my heart, and that’s what God is after in me.  That’s way more compelling than rules.  That’s way more inviting than shame.  That is clearly what is being taught through Jesus’ ministry.

These few words from James are at the heart of why our Christian faith, the Jesus movement was so successful in spreading - it was seen as an invitation into something better.  It is also the greatest opportunity of our generation - that we could begin to change that narrative again, and that we could begin to brand our faith as such, an invitation to something better.  In a word that is torn apart by racial injustice, poverty, inequality in so many different ways, the one thing we can all do is to heed James’ advice and to make it easy for those around us to come to Jesus.  It takes intentionality, it takes forgiveness, and it requires our leaning on God’s Grace and guidance...but that is exactly the position God wants us in as His followers.  It’s funny how that works.  Today, I pray that I would see opportunities to make my life more invitational for His kingdom.

This is one of the most important teachings, in my opinion, in all of the New Testament.  And I will tell you who this really should hit home with the most - those of us that grew up in the church.  For most Christians who grew up in church, at least down in the Southern region of the United States where I am from - the Bible was described to us a manual for life, as a measuring stick, and as an order of conduct.  We were taught to act right, to do right, and that behavior is what is most important.  The Bible was regarded as the super-Holy object, it was mysterious, and it was God’s Sacred Word, God-breathed, God-inspired, and it teaches us how to live.

In reality, there is an element of truth to all of that.  But, also in reality is the fact that a lot of that misses the point that God was clearly making brining Jesus into the world.  God was introducing Grace to the world with Jesus.  God was redeeming the sins of the world.  God was cutting the ties to the 10 Commandments, God was severing the relationship between behavior and salvation, and God was giving us absolute freedom to abuse His Grace and receive His Savior Jesus.

Now, if you are a church leader, or you are a parent, or you are just a person who wants to be treated fairly (we are all at least one of those things, just FYI), how reasonable does that sound?  How reasonable is it that a cold-blooded, calculating serial killer and murderer, could stand right next to you in Heaven one day?  Is that fair?  What about the people who shamed you in school?  Or what about the people who stole your promotion at work?  How is that fair?

There is a tension that we all feel between what we think is right and with what God gives us through Jesus, which is Grace.  Deep down, pretty much all of us at some level have to deal with the issue of what is ‘fair’.  And, in reality, God never lays that out for us.  So, when we adhere to a fairness standard, we are essentially giving ourselves authority that we don’t have - the authority of being a judge.

These counsel members that were pushing for circumcision were doing just that - they had to endure it, they had to trade things out in their lifestyles in order to be followers of God before Jesus, they had to suffer (in their minds) - it wasn’t fair that people could now walk right up and enjoy the fruits of faith without suffering.  Paul understood it because Paul had to get past that himself.  Fair isn’t in God’s vocabulary.  Grace is free...and it is free for everyone.

Now, ironically...think about fair for a moment.  What could REALLY be more fair than something that is free for everyone, as is Grace?  That is really the ONLY fair thing anyways.  The only thing that isn’t fair, in reality, is that many of us were wrongly taught, or it was wrongly implied to us, that we have to earn our way into God’s favor.  That’s not what Jesus taught, and that’s not what scripture teaches us.  We see this counsel wrestling with this this morning.

Today is a simple chapter in that it doesn’t take a lot to follow what’s going on, and there isn’t a lot of deep text into which we can dive and get lost in the weeds.  We see Paul and Barnabas complete their first missionary journey before returning to Antioch.  Tomorrow we will read about one of the most important church meetings of all time.  In today’s reading, though, there were 4 words that really made an impression on me...from verse 20:

“...on the next day...”

The full verse reads:

20 “But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.”

What had happened right before that was the Paul had been stoned by these conspiring Jews from Antioch and Iconium, trying to run Paul off...so that went so far as to stone Paul, and they left him for dead.  Paul was just able to keep breathing evidently...these weren’t the type of people who never saw death either, so Paul was likely just barely hanging onto life.  And, THE NEXT DAY he was off to Derbe with Barnabas, preaching and teaching.  Now, I am sure he was struggling for a while, he was surely in some sort of a recovery process.  Considering it was a stoning, I can’t believe be didn’t bear the scars from that kind of a beating for a while afterwards.  Yet, THE NEXT DAY he was on his way, and he was back to preaching and teaching.

For me, nothing fancy today...just a little old fashioned motivation.  And, I want to take that a little further, just to talk to myself for a moment.  We ‘aggrandize’ these events, we make them out into this big stories, which they are, and we ask big questions like, “Would I have the faith to do what Paul did in that moment?”  And, you know, that took a lot of faith.  But, most of life doesn’t exist in the extremes like this.  Most of life is lived in the in between - in between the extreme moments of euphoria and the extreme moments of despair.  In my experience, it is in the middle where we can become a little numb...we stop noticing the small things, because the small things become so commonplace.  If life were lived on a continuum between 1 (despair) and 10 (euphoria), we tend to live between about 3 and 7 most of the time.  And, in doing so, we tend to lose appreciation for that range...we rarely understand where we are in that range...we become numb to our emotional state if we aren’t careful.  I am reminded today, via Paul’s motivation, that I should be encouraged in the in between, that it is in the typical, often mundane day-to-day life where we can be ordinarily extraordinary.  This is because it takes intentionality by way of time in prayer, time reading God’s Word, thinking about God’s word, looking around and nudging ourselves to enter into opportunities to do God’s work...it takes a level of intentionality to create momentum in our spiritual development.  Motivation typically follows action, and action builds momentum, and then we feel the motivation.  Today, though it has nothing to do with Paul’s experience, I feel an encouragement from God to pay attention to the small things, take inventory of where I am on that scale of 1 to 10, and to get on with it.  Paul arose from a stoning and went on his merry way...I can arise from my slumber on this day and look for an opportunity to do God’s work today.

Just to take a pause in the reading of Acts for a day, I flipped over to Proverbs and landed in chapter 20.  And, in reading this...I landed on verse 10:

10 Unequal weights and unequal measures

are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

The reason I paused here, and the thought that came to mind really relates back to what we’ve been reading about in Acts.  In Acts, Paul and Peter (and all of the apostles, obviously) are teaching that we are free from the burden of the Law, the Law handed down by God through Moses.  God laid out the way in which we are to earn His approval with this Law, and 1500 years of human history from the time of Moses to the time of Jesus essentially proved that none of us could pull it off.  None of us could earn God’s approval.  That means ALL of us, by definition, fell short, and would fall short today.  All of us.  The reason I think it is important to pause on that, and to reflect on that, is because it is our human nature that tends to want to draw us into a mode of comparison.  We look around and we get our sense of ‘okay-ness’ from those around us...by comparison.  And, we often take that comparison into our spiritual lives...when we feel like we’ve been good, we feel comfortable approaching God in prayer.  When we feel like we’ve been bad, we don’t.  All-the-while, we are missing two very important facts: (1) we are always bad and never good when compared to the only standard that God has ever given us, and (2) God wants us to look at Him for our sense of ‘okay-ness’, not others.

And here is the thing that is so insidious about comparison.  I find that most Christians can be broadly placed into 2 categories - those that lean on Grace (which is most of us rebellious types) and those who rely on fairness/Law (which are those people who were (and are) the rule-followers).  Those of us that rely on Grace typically abuse that Grace in how we live our lives - I will freely admit that, being in this category.  But, those of us who are the rule-followers...there is an insidious trap that they fall into.  I am generalizing here, but I have noticed that these folks tend to try to adopt God’s Grace by way of the Gospel, but then also try to mix in God’s law.  It is what we see with the Jerusalem Counsel in Acts.  In reality though, you can’t have it both ways.  God doesn’t grade on a curve, nor does He grade us at all - that was the Law.  And, if you live with that kind of fairness mentality, this verse is for you - because God has never given us a scale on which to judge ourselves, or to know how we stand with Him.  This verse reminds us that God is just, and it is against His nature to judge us if we aren’t given a scale.

Today, even though I am more of the rebellious type by nature, I (as all of us do) have some of the fairness thing in me too...and I am praying that God would help me spot it, root it out, and let go of that.  In my case, the biggest impact that has is on my prayer life - when I am most behaving, I feel closest to God; and the opposite is also true.  But, that’s a me thing, not a God thing.  God hasn’t moved...and my faith should be more stable than that as well!