This passage teaches that when Paul travels from city to city, the Holy Spirit shows him that he will be imprisoned and experience suffering. And yet, Paul goes on to say that he considers his life worth nothing to him, if only he may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to God’s grace (vs. 24).
Lord, I thank You for the faith of Paul. It has been amazing reading through the book of Acts and following Paul’s myriad missionary journeys. How many times did Paul speak before strangers who had never heard the gospel? And how many times did he speak before strangers who had contempt for the gospel? And yet again and again, Paul went.
Paul’s journeys are not based on a formula. Sometimes he would stop meeting with people who were resistant, and sometimes he’d spend day after day after day reasoning with them. At least once he avoids visiting fellow believers because he wants to get someplace else without delay. His missionary journeys aren’t identical, but each has its own distinct shape and character. His plans often did not go as he hoped (once he intended to sail to Jerusalem, but instead took a long journey retracing his steps through Macedonia.
Paul was able to change his plans. He was flexible. He had great faith that the Holy Spirit, God present in him, was faithful and able to guide him better than he himself could. Paul was intimate with the God’s Spirit; God’s Spirit was Paul’s confidant, who Paul perhaps talked to about traveling plans.
I confess that when I read Paul’s journeys, I am confused about what to take away into my comparatively bland life of being a middle school English teacher. Paul was warned by the Holy Spirit of hardships that would come as a result of doing the work of the gospel, and yet he continued.
I thank You for the Bible, God. I thank You that it’s where I need to go when I’m stressed out (like I was, big time, yesterday).
I ask, Lord, that you would open doors throughout the world for your gospel, and that many would be changed forever by the Holy Spirit, by the love of the Father, by the price paid by the Son. I ask that this would happen for the Jewish people, that they would see their true Father.
Lord, I ask for the persecuted Christians to be comforted and taken home in your time, and for them to finish the race and complete the task. And God, I ask that for all Christians, especially in the USA, my country. I ask that US Christians would finish the race and complete the task. Lord, I don’t know if the task is the same for everyone–the task of testifying to the gospel of Your grace–but I ask just the same that you make us know that and make us faithful through this lifelong, oft-confusing process called sanctification, our present salvation.
Lord, I pray for the nominal Christians. I know I am speaking a lot today, but I am praying for what I feel irresistably drawn to pray for. I pray for those who call themselves Christians. I say that not in spite, God; my heart breaks for them. I have thought myself a Christian without knowing Christ. I know that these people suffer daily through fear, confusion, and myriad other trying circumstances. But without You, these circumstances are cause only for misery. Lord, I pray for a revival of the people, for a great wave of the Holy Spirit that knocks down the totem poles in our hearts and places You sole and supreme as Lord of lives.
I ask, God, for the regeneration of the teaching corps of our country. I ask that You would change the hearts of teachers around the country, in all states. I know that the problem with American education as it pertains to teachers is not the skills or the knowledge or the empathy of those we have teaching, but rather it is their hearts. We need a teaching corps with gospel-changed hearts, my God. I pray for this: gospel-changed hearts of millions of teachers, affecting hundreds of millions of students a year. Lord, lift up your wayward children who teach, and show them this Way that Luke writes about. Show them, Lord, that it is like nothing else (as Tim Keller says), that it is better than life (as Matt Chandler says).
I ask for these things in Your Son Jesus’ name, that He might be glorified in our schools, and in my own, and in my classroom.
Thank You, Holy Spirit of God.
Tags: Acts 20:23, Acts 20:24, American education, Bible, gospel-changed hearts, Holy Spirit, imprisonment, Luke, matt chandler, Meditations, missionary journeys, present salvation, sanctification, students, teachers, the Father, the gospel, the Jewish people, the Son, Tim Keller
