Compelled by theSpirit

December 22: Acts 20:22-24 (NIV)
22 "And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.
Who can ever tell the impact of one life? Consider this, one man who was set against the Christian faith at its very outset. He did everything he could to rid the world of those who claimed the name of Christ. HE only saw them as an obstacle to true religion that he had grown up with. The sacrificial system of the Jewish faith was the only way to see life, to vary from this teaching was certain death and to allow anything other than this teaching to exists was seen as a denial of the true faith if Israel.
This young man had been trained in the best Jewish schools and he had learned the law well. He could debate with the best of them and he was skilled in argumentation and debate. He could argue circles around anyone who would oppose him. He had one of the best teachers of debate to train him in logical argumentation and he was good at it.
His ability to convince others of his viewpoint led him to be accepted as the leader of the group that made its existence to be to rid the world of those who followed Christ. He had obtained permission to go to Damascus with the intent of destroying those in Damascus who held to the way of Christ and taught others to do the same.
Little did he know that he was on the road to his own conversion. ON the way to Damascus he encountered this Christ he was persecuting and found himself blinded by the light of this one he sought to rid the world of.
Enter a man named Ananias who came to visit him and proclaimed to him the whole counsel of God. As this man was proclaiming to him the gospel his eyes were opened and he saw the truth. This new revelation completely overhauled his life. Instead of persecuting those who belonged to Christ he became their greatest advocate. What eh had experienced on the road and now in the hearing of the gospel from this man named Ananias would change everything about his life.
Instead of taking others lives he would now give his life for the very thing he sought to rid the world of. SO began the great missionary imperative of the church, led first by the one who sought her destruction. We know this man by the name of Paul the Apostle, the one who would be used by God to write over half of the New Testament.
Think of it, the once enemy of Christ now becomes the vessel from which we have over half of the New testament. Without Paul we would not know of many of our great doctrines of the faith. We would not understand Justification by faith, we would be lost as to how secure we are in Christ; we would not have much an understanding of our sinful nature or how to be set free from such a nature.
This one man faced more encounters with death before his own it would seem insanity to continue to go through such persecution, unless of course what he believed was really true? SO we see the first missionary force led by one man who was convinced in spite of all his arguments against the truth. From the writings of this one man thousands of missionaries in the history of the church would be encouraged to go to difficult and hard places because they too had been compelled by the same Spirit that compelled him to go to Jerusalem and beyond.
May we join these noble ranks and find ourselves living for the difficult and hard places where the gospel has not yet penetrated.
Send us O God to those places where the Gospel has not yet gone,
Pastor phil