Tuesday 7th March - Acts 23

Today’s chapter is Acts 23

Tom writes:

If this was a TV drama we’d get some syrupy mood music, Paul looking up wistfully and a grainy flashback to 9:13 where Ananias prophesied “this man (Paul) is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings”. Luke - who fast-forwarded past anointed aprons and 18 explosive months in Corinth - now slackens the pace to slo-mo on some court cases. Either he’d been reading a lot of John Grisham or he saw these chapters as the climactic fulfilment of Jesus’ declaration over this disciple. This brings us back to the image we used in chapter 9; listening to music albums can appear effortless, beautiful and blended, while the recording of those albums can be messy, muddled and flat out exhausting. There is no doubt that Paul is slap bang in the centre of Jesus’ will for his life. Claudius Lysias, Felix, Festus and Agrippa are a catalogue of Gentile kings before whom Paul appears. This fulfilment of Ananias’ prophecy is spine-tingling. But, to Paul, it must have felt close to disaster.

To Paul the whole “outworking of God’s will” must have felt like it was on a cliff edge, especially when he found out there were 40 very hungry people trying hard to fling him off the cliff. When we read the bible it is so easy to skate over the details - pasting a veneer onto each character of what we think faith should feel like. It becomes one-dimension, boring, and a long way from anything we will ever experience. But if we stop and use our imagination to put ourselves in the shoes of these early disciples we find these pages pulsating with promise. Today might be a day where the detail of life feels contrary, where your popularity feels catastrophic and your very survival seems in question. But God will out. God’s promises over your life will hold. God’s purposes for your life will be fulfilled - if you continue to remain faithful to him. The neat summaries of our lives will be beautiful and blended, even if the detail of today feels messy, muddled or is flat out exhausting.

Question for reflection

How much do you know and think about the biblical promises God has spoken over your life that will certainly come true if you simply remain in him?