TBT: “Going in Your Purpose”

God Gold of the day

Acts 9:19-22

“For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.“

Once Paul was given this new life filled with the Holy Spirit, he didn’t sit around all hunky dory just happy to be there, he took the power and the truth he was given and gave back by starting his ministry. What’s even more impressive about him jumping straight to action is he knew there would be opposition because the people he was speaking to were the same people he used to work with, slandering and murdering over the name of Jesus, but that didn’t stop him. With Paul being a good steward of his new life, he wasn’t left high and dry to be spit on and ridiculed, but he was blessed by the Lord with strength to withstand it. We are put in situations all the time when we know there will be resistance and opposition whether we are spreading the Gospel to people who don’t believe or taking on strongholds of sin. I’ll be honest there is a lot of times where I’ve been weak and hid so I didn’t have to face the opposition and what’s encouraging to me is when Paul was facing even bigger opposition with people who probably wanted to kill him after switching sides, he stayed faithful, kept preaching, and was rewarded with the strength to keep on going, proclaiming the name of Christ even more.

My big challenges to myself and to you from this is not to wait around to spread the name of Jesus cause it will never be an easy task to be done with no resistance and in living a Christlike life through words and action, when the opposition comes, no matter how bad it is, we need to meet it at the door instead of hiding in a closet because if we stay faithful, right beside that opposition is going to be the Lord blessing us with the strength to stand firm and blow past the opposition. I know I read this and thought “yeah of course Paul would do that after being given this gift of new life.” Then I asked myself, “if that seems so obvious then why don’t my actions show how thankful I am for this gift I’ve been given?”