Every Man Will be Bound

“…Let the will of the Lord be done” Acts 21:12-14

Some may argue that the goal of a martyr is to die. I would argue that the goal of a martyr is to live. In a martyrs case it is their life lived for Christ that often proves itself through their willingness to die for Him. Our focus should not be on dying for Christ, it should be on living for Christ. Let’s look at Paul as an example of this.

Paul knew whatever awaited Him in Jerusalem, be it affliction, imprisonment, death or life, for Him to flee the will of the Lord would have been death, even if it meant saving his life, and to ferociously pursue the will of the Lord would have been life, even if it meant losing his life. For Paul this was not a matter of physical life or death, he had already settled that, “I do not account me life of any value nor as precious to myself” (Acts 20:24a), this was a matter of living out the life the Lord had willed for him, “if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24b).

This becomes really simple when we boil it down to this one application. Is your physical life more important than the will of the Lord? When our focus is on the physical, we are held back by real things, our emotions, wants, desires and fears. When our focus is on saving our life, tending to our physical needs, be it emotional, relational, financial we often get tangled in the cares of this world. When our focus is on the will of the Lord, there is an amazing freedom we find from ourselves and this world as we deny our emotions, our wants and our will.

One might ask, how Paul could have felt free in the will of the Lord when he said himself he was “constrained by the Spirit?” (Acts 20:22). That word constrained literally meaning to be bound in. The Christian life is a paradox. It is a supernatural thing that a man who is bound can have so much freedom. When we think we are free, living our lives as we please, satisfying our desires and meeting our every need we become bound, we become slaves to our passions. In this life you will be bound. Either bound in self, which leads to a deeper bondage, a deeper darkness, or bound in the Spirit, which leads to new found freedom and life.

Let us be like Paul and not like the disciples in our text. For they were persuading Paul to choose the course that would save his life, not the course that would set him free. Paul would not be persuaded and it is interesting to note what eventually happens. “And since he would not be persuaded, we ceased and said “Let the will of the Lord be done.” Their fight was never against Paul, their fight had always been against the Lords will for Paul. We can be those who fight the will of the Lord, always persuading, or we can be those who give up the fight and cease before the Lord. Every man will be bound. The question today is what are you bound in?

Pastor Watching

“Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk?” (Acts 3:12)

Here I see an exhortation for modern day Christianity. This is for the people of the church. The question we need to be asking ourselves is; Why are we staring at our Pastor’s? As if they are the origin for some move of God. At the origin of every move of God is Jesus. At the center of the church is Jesus, but for some that center stage is occupied by another. It’s never been about the man God is using it has always been about God who is using man. Here is where the problem lies.

We are too quick to give credit where it does not belong. He is such a great communicator, he is so relevant, he is so hip, and all of these things may be so, but may they not be counted as why God is using them. This limits our view of God, thinking He is only in the business of using “the charismatic” to accomplish His work. Believer, it is not by their own power or piety that dead men are coming to life, it is by the gospel, the power unto salvation (Romans 1:16). They may share the gospel better than we can, but they don’t have a better gospel than we do.

So let us not wonder, let us not stare. Unless our wondering and staring is at Jesus. For often times the work God does through man is wondrous, it is worthy of a stare, but He is the only one worthy of receiving it. God’s ministers are to be esteemed highly and respected, but may we never forget, they too are but men with a nature just like ours (James 5:17).