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The Great Guarantee

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 27
Meditation: Acts 27:24

“Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.”

Shift Your Focus… Paul was in a pickle—that was not usual for Paul. Because of his bold and uncompromising witness to faith in Christ, he had at times found himself in the middle of rioting crowds, in front of hostile courts, bound by hands and feet in a stockade, and on the receiving end of a good old fashion stoning, just to name a few.

Now he was traveling by ship to Rome to stand trial before Caesar and make his case for Christianity.  Due to some unfavorable winds, the going was slow and the season changed, and the ship got caught in a hurricane. Day-after-day the ship and its cargo, both human and goods, were at the mercy of this monster storm, and it became increasingly apparent that the ship was going to go down and they all were going to die.

Then we have these incredible words that the angel of the Lord spoke to Paul in the night: “Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.”

Paul’s response was to take God at his word and encourage the fear stricken passengers, “Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me. However, we must run aground on a certain island.” (Acts 27:25-26)

Paul understood something that should give you and me great comfort and strength.  He knew that he would not die a day sooner, nor live a day longer for that matter, until he had fulfilled God’s purpose for his life. God’s purpose was for Paul to preach the Gospel in Rome before the court of Caesar.  A little hurricane was not going to prevent that!

God has a purpose for our lives, too, and nothing, except our willful rejection of his plan, will take us off course from the fulfillment of his Divine purpose for our lives.  Not sickness, accidents, financial hardship, hostility, failure, rejection—not even death.

David wrote in Psalm 139:16, “Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”  What that means is that God knows very well every one of your days even before they come to pass.  He knows exactly how many you will have, and what each one will contain.  He is the One in charge of you.

Take courage, my friend.  Your life is in God’s hands.  Nothing can happen to you except by permission of God.  And the day of your death will not come a day sooner than your gracious Father will allow, and that will not be until his purpose for you in this life has been completed. Then a new purpose will begin—and this time, it will never end!

That is the great guarantee that comes with your faith!

“We are never more safe, never have more reason to expect the Lord’s help, than when we are most sensible that we can do nothing without Him.” ~John Newton

Prayer… Father, how comforting to know that every one of my days has been planned out and ordained by you—even the one’s yet ahead.  You know how many days have been allotted to me, and I will not die a day sooner that by what you have planned.  I will therefore live them to the fullest and strive to fulfill your purposes in each one.

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The Right Time

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 26
Meditation: Acts 26:28

Then King Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”

Shift Your Focus… Paul was on trial for his life. It wouldn’t be the last time, either. In this instance, he was holding forth before Governor Festus and King Arippa, giving an impassioned defense of his faith and the veracity of Christianity. Paul didn’t have much time, nor did he have a particularly friendly audience.

None of that really mattered to Paul. It didn’t matter if the conditions were perfect; in fact, they never really were. It didn’t matter if he was speaking before this majestic court or with the untold numbers of nameless folk he had met in his many travels. (Acts 26:22) It didn’t matter if he was able to stay in one city for many months to lay down his Christian theology, or if he just had a minute to proclaim the story of his conversion to a listening ear. Paul had a strategy: Wherever he was, no matter what his audience, whether big or small, friendly or hostile, Paul was going to get a word in for Jesus Christ. In this case, he made the appeal to King Agrippa to place his faith in Christ.

The conditions for sharing the Gospel were never perfect for Paul, but they were always right. And that is true for you and me as well. If we wait for the perfect circumstances before we are able to share our faith, we will be endlessly waiting. If, however, we will be ready at all times to get a good word in for Jesus Christ, like Paul, we will find opportunity aplenty.

Perhaps a good exercise for you would be to think through in detail your personal testimony of faith in Christ to the point where you could share it when the opportunity arises. It would also be good to get well acquainted with the plan of salvation, complete with Bible verses, so you can be ready to lead someone to faith at any time. There are many good pamphlets available to use as a resource, or even to keep with you for that special moment. My personal favorite is Billy Graham’s “Steps To Peace With God.” It is a simple, thorough and compelling explanation of how to receive Christ.

An equally helpful exercise would be to think through the “Cliff Notes” version of both your testimony and plan of salvation. What if you had just a minute to share? Could you do it? If you will be ready with the one-minute plan, you will suddenly find your available minutes have been generously increased.

Paul didn’t have much time in this case, but he was ready, and he got the job done. I trust that we will develop the same strategic mindset as Paul, and begin to look for opportunities every day to share the greatest story every told.

Even if we have just a minute!

“The preaching that this world needs most is the sermons in shoes that are walking with Jesus Christ.” ~D.L. Moody

Prayer… Lord, I want to be ready to share the reason for the hope I have in you—even if it is just a minute that presents itself. Help me to sharpen my testimony.  Keep me ever mindful to look for open doors throughout my day.  And give me the privilege to tell some person about you today.

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Dead and Buried or Alive and Well

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 25
Meditation: Acts 25:19

The Jews had some questions against Paul about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who had died, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.

Shift Your Focus… That is really the crux of the argument for, or against, Christianity, isn’t it? Is Jesus dead and buried—end of story—or is he alive and well?

Of course, we who follow Christ stake our claim on the latter. That is the crux of Christianity. We will go to the death for that belief, because it is all that matters. As the great historian Jaroslav Pelikan so simply yet profoundly put it,

“If Christ is risen—nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

An African Muslim converted to Christianity. Some of his friends asked him, “Why have you become a Christian?” He answered, “Well, its like this. Suppose you were going down the road and suddenly the road forked in two directions, and you didn’t know which way to go, and there at the fork in the road were two men, one dead and one alive. Which one would you ask which way to go?”

Jesus is either dead or alive. If he is dead, then our Christian faith is worse than worthless because it is history’s worst fraud. But if Jesus is alive, it is history’s greatest miracle by miles. If Jesus is alive, we ought to ask him which way to go, and then drop everything to follow him. If Jesus is alive, we ought to make him the core of our lives, the purpose of our existence, and the passion of our every breath. If Jesus is alive, he must become the foundation of our faith, the reason for our hope, and the source of our love. The Apostle Peter, who witnessed his bodily resurrection from the tomb, said,

“Through Jesus, you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.” (I Peter 1:21-22)

Is he dead or alive? I am banking my eternal existence that he is alive!

“Without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.”~Otto Von Bismark

Prayer… Jesus, you are the Risen One, and I will follow you with all my being—heart, mind, soul and strength.

 

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The Doorman, The Closer and The Storyteller

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 24
Meditation: Acts 24:24-25

And after some days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. Now as he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and answered, “Go away for now; when I have a convenient time I will call for you.”

Shift Your Focus… The Apostle Paul was arguably the greatest evangelist Christianity has ever known. Yet he didn’t win them all—Governor Felix being a prime example.

Then again, winning everybody to Christ wasn’t Paul’s job, and it isn’t your job either. Only the Holy Spirit can bring conviction to the human heart. In this case, the Holy Spirit did his job: he took Paul’s words and produced deep conviction in Felix, whom verse 25 says, “was afraid.”

And only the person with whom faith is being shared can open the door of their heart to the truth. In this case, Felix didn’t.  Verse 25 says that he found the demands of Christianity inconvenient, so he put off making a decision. And as far as we know, Felix never did cross over into faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul’s job was simply to initiate spiritual conversations with people when opportunities arose, and then leave the rest up to the Holy Spirit.  That’s what your job is, and mine too.  We are to look for opportunities to have spiritual conversations with people, and when those opportunities arise, we are to seize them, faithfully share what we know, and leave the rest up to the Holy Spirit.

That takes a lot of pressure off, doesn’t it!  You don’t have to pry open any evangelistic doors.  The Holy Spirit will get those doors open for you—after all, he is the Great Doorman when it comes to witnessing. You simply have to walk through those doors when he opens them. Nor do you have to close the deal.  Only the Holy Spirit can produce saving conviction, and only the person who hears the message can open their heart to saving faith. It is not up to you to make the sale—after all, the Holy Spirit is the Great Closer.

All you have to do is tell the story. All you have to do is to speak as a satisfied customer to what Christ has done in your life. All you have to do is to tell what you know—which may be a whole lot, or it might be very little. Just share what you know under the guidance of the Spirit in those moments of divine appointment and watch what God will do.

If I were a betting man, I would bet you that a door opens today where you and I will have opportunity to initiate a spiritual conversation.  What do you say we seize that moment to share what we know!

“A good witness isn’t like a salesman, emphasis is on a person rather than a product. A good witness is like a signpost. It doesn’t matter whether it is old, young, pretty, ugly; it has to point the right direction and be able to be understood. We are witnesses to Christ, we point to him.”  ~John White

Prayer… Father, keep me alert to those moments today where the door will open to a conversation with someone about the greatest story ever told—the story of your saving love through Jesus Christ.

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Take Courage!

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 23
Meditation: Acts 23:11

The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”

Shift Your Focus… “Take courage!” “Fear not!” “Be strong and courageous and do not be afraid!” In one form or another, the directive to be bold and courageous in the face of trouble—real or perceived—is the command issued from the Lord’s own mouth more often than any other command in the entire Bible.

That is pretty amazing isn’t it? You would think the command to love, or to give, or to pray would rank at the top, but it is the command to be courageous. Someone has counted up all the “fear not’s” and its derivatives in Scripture and found that there are 365—one for every day of the year. That’s because the Sovereign God knew very well that our chief weakness—the tendency to abandon our trust in him and fall into fear—would be vulnerable to the Enemy’s daily assault. It is abundantly clear not only in Scripture, but in the reality of our daily lives, that Satan’s stock-in-trade is to entice us to doubt, worry, and ultimately, be paralyzed by fear.

Paul was in a heap of trouble in this account. However, this wasn’t unusual for Paul; his faith seemed to get him into a pickle on a fairly regular basis. Yet whether you are reading about Paul here in the historical account provided by Acts, or reading his own thoughts in the letters he wrote to the churches, he seems to face these life-threatening circumstances with an unusual degree of courage.

How is that? To begin with, Paul knew that his mission was to preach the Gospel, and ultimately to do so in Rome—the center of the empire—where the potential for untold numbers of people to hear the message of Christ was at its highest. It mattered not to Paul whether he went there as a preacher of the Gospel, or as a prisoner of the Gospel, so long as he got there.

Paul also knew that in general, his journey included suffering for the cause of Christ. Jesus himself had given Paul foreknowledge of that at his conversion in Acts 9:16. But in this specific instance here in Acts 23, the Lord himself had stood by Paul, perhaps in a time of prayer or in a night vision, and called upon him to take courage. God commanded Paul to boldness because he, the Sovereign God, was with Paul and was going to accomplish his purpose through Paul no matter what.

Now the real lesson here is that God wants to do that through you too! You may not be facing life-threatening circumstances like Paul. Then again, maybe you are. The point is, God has a purpose for you, and Satan will throw all kinds of circumstances at you to hinder your Divinely commissioned purpose. However, those circumstances are irrelevant. Not unimportant—just irrelevant.

What is relevant is that the Sovereign God is standing by you, and he will accomplish his purposes through you come what may—opposition, hardship, failure, cancer, or any other circumstances you would not have chosen for yourself.

Take courage, my friend. The Lord is standing by you! He knows what he is doing, and he knows how to bring you through this rough patch in a way that will bring him the greatest glory and you the greatest good.

That is your God’s stock-in-trade. So fear not!

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.” ~G.K. Chesterton

Prayer… Sovereign Father, today I will face the temptation to fear, but right here and now, I resolve to face that fear with faith. I will be strong and courageous.

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Water Baptism: What Are You Waiting For?

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 22
Meditation: Acts 22:15-16

“For you will be His witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”

Shift Your Focus… “What are you waiting for?” Water baptism was at issue here, and that’s what the Lord himself had asked Paul to do when he appeared to him on the Damascus Road.

Paul is recounting that life-changing encounter here in Acts 22 before a hostile crowd, and he includes this foundational bit of salvation theology regarding water baptism. Though he is not trying to deliver a teaching on baptism, there are some things we glean from his statement regarding this important Christian sacrament.

To begin with, baptism is important to the Lord. The first thing Jesus asked of the freshly converted Paul was to go get baptized. Jesus himself had been baptized (Matthew 3:13-16) and then had commissioned his disciple to make disciples, which included baptizing those new converts (Matthew 28:19-20). If baptism was that important to Jesus, it ought to be that important to us.

If you have not been baptized, “now why are you waiting?”

Not only that, but baptism is also a public witness to our inner transformation. Jesus had just revealed to Paul that the first great purpose in his new Christian life was to witness to his salvation experience and his personal encounter with the resurrected Lord. What was true for Paul is true for you as well: Baptism is one of the first and most fundamental public witnesses you can express of your faith in Jesus.

So if you have not been baptized, “now why are you waiting?”

Moreover, baptism is an act of obedience. Jesus commanded it, and though baptism doesn’t take away your sins, forgiveness is only complete through our obedience to his commands. That’s why in this conversation with Paul, Jesus tied in the “washing away of your sins” with baptism.

If you want to fully obey Jesus, then “why are you waiting?” Go and get baptized.

Finally, baptism is the pathway to a deeper experience with Jesus. Jesus encountered Paul on the Damascus Road before his baptism, but it was in the sacrament of baptism that Paul was to “call upon the name of the Lord” who hears and responds when his children submit to his will.

If you want to go deeper with Jesus, then “why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized!”

If you have neglected the Lord’s command to be baptized in water, then the next opportunity you get, do it! You won’t regret it.

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”  ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Prayer… Lord, I must confess that at times I have been selective in my obedience. Please forgive me, for selective obedience is in reality, disobedience.  With your help, from this day forward, in all matters I will offer full obedience to your commands.

 

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Your Guiding Principle For Life

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Acts 21
Meditation: Acts 21:14

So when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, “The will of the Lord be done.”

Shift Your Focus…  “God willing!”  For the Christian, that is either a fundamental guiding principle of life or nothing more than a vacuous platitude.

You hear that phrase quite a bit in Christian circles.  It has become a part of our “Christianese.”  In many cases, “God willing” is used almost as an afterthought or as an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, perhaps to give what has been said an added spiritual punch. The problem is, the person saying it probably doesn’t even bother to think what “God willing” even means, or what it will require.

When these believers in the city of Caesarea said this about Paul’s plans, both they and Paul knew exactly what they were saying, and what would be required of him.  They had tried to dissuade Paul from traveling to Jerusalem. They knew trouble awaited him. One of the respected prophets in the church, a man named Agabus, had prophesied that Paul could be certain of much trouble if he continued to his destination.

Paul was quite aware of the potential for persecution, imprisonment, and even death.  But he was ready for that: “For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 21:13)  What was behind Paul’s determination?  The will of the Lord!  Paul had made a similar declaration in the previous chapter:

“I don’t know what will happen to me in Jerusalem, but I must obey God’s Spirit and go there. In every city I visit, I am told by the Holy Spirit that I will be put in jail and will be in trouble in Jerusalem. But I don’t care what happens to me, as long as I finish the work that the Lord Jesus gave me to do. And that work is to tell the good news about God’s great kindness.”  (Acts 20:22-24)

Paul was bound by a purpose, and that purpose was to fulfill the will of God for his life, come what may. His purpose was not to be comfortable, to stay out of trouble, to be successful or to live a long, happy life. It was simply to declare the Gospel of Jesus Christ as strongly and strategically as possible, even if that resulted in persecution, imprisonment, and death—which ultimately is exactly what happened to Paul.

“God willing” was a way of life for Paul—in scorn of the consequences.  I want that to be true of me as well!  How about you?

The next time you are tempted to use that phrase, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “do I know what I am saying? Do I understand what God’s will is, and what it will require of me?”

If you do, then by all means, go ahead and boldly declare it: “May the Lord’s will be done!”

“The golden rule for understanding in spiritual matters is not intellect, but obedience.” ~Oswald Chambers 

Prayer… Lord, my prayer today (and every day from here on out) is what baseball great Bobby Richardson prayed, “Dear God, Your will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen.”That’s what I want, too:what you want!