Acts 19 - 21

I find Paul to be a pretty interesting person.  He was someone who was truly living for Christ, and someone who jump-started the early Church.  The story of his miraculous conversion is really quite incredible considering how Christ was able to completely reverse his mission from persecuting Christians to preaching their message.  A story that I find inspires my own faith.

    

Fast-forwarding now to Ch20, we see Paul speaking about his personal mission, and how clear to me it is that he is speaking from his heart because what he says is re-affirmed by his actions.  In this passage he is giving a farewell goodbye to the elders of the Church in Ephesus.

Paul says:  “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.  I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.  However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”

Here we see that Paul has a relationship with the Holy Spirit so deep that it “compels” him to travel to spread the gospel.  We see Paul’s faithfulness in God that he follows the Spirit’s will despite the warnings of imprisonment and hardship which as we know are sure to come.  He really humbles himself, and lays down his life for the Lord and states that “my life is worth nothing, I only wish to live for the Lord to complete the task given to me".   I think what is sweet about Paul is he is filled with this strong desire that is not to spread hardship and distress, but it is an overwhelmingly unselfish desire to enrich people’s lives with the gospel, and it is all fueled by Jesus himself in His calling of Paul.  How sweet is our Lord.

But it doesn't end there.  Look how rewarding this mission has been for Paul.  Here is this guy who lived an extremely humble life, living in poverty, charity, and obedience to the Lord.  He lived a life that I feel like most people in this day would consider lame and never want to commit to, however, it paid HUGE dividends for Paul.  He may have given up money, but I can only imagine how many sweet friendships he must have created having traveled to so many different cities and touched some many different people’s lives.  This is super evident in the elder’s reaction to Paul’s farewell.  In Ch20, verse 36, the elders respond to Paul’s farewell by (1) praying with him, (2) weeping with him, (3) embracing him, and (4) kissing him.  I mean praying is great, don’t get me wrong, but I tend to focus more on the embracing part.  I just have this vision of like a thousand people lining up to hug Paul as he is leaving … how loved he must have felt.  And keep in mind this is just ONE city to which he preached.  Paul was pretty successful in other cities as well.  I bet that guy could hop a train anywhere and never worry about not having a place to lay his head.  He gave up owning a home, and in turn found about a million homes.  I think Jesus got it right when He said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)