Tag: acts 13

The Motivation for Ministry (Acts 13:16-25)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Standing up, Paul motioned with his hand and said: “Fellow Israelites and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me! The God of the people of Israel chose our ancestors; he made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt; with mighty power he led them out of that country; for about forty years he endured their conduct in the wilderness; and he overthrew seven nations in Canaan, giving their land to his people as their inheritance. All this took about 450 years.

“After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’

“From this man’s descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised. Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. As John was completing his work, he said: ‘Who do you suppose I am? I am not the one you are looking for. But there is one coming after me whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.’ (New International Version)

Paul and Barnabas were a dynamic duo. In their missionary journey, they had the practice of traveling from city to city and attending the local synagogue services. It was customary to have a time in the worship when a word of encouragement could be offered from folks in the congregation. Paul consistently took those opportunities to talk of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards… Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

Søren Kierkegaard

When Paul converted to Christianity, it totally altered his motivation. Jesus became everything to him. Jesus was what got him up in the morning; who sustained him through his days; who he thought about when he went to sleep at night.

Concerning Jesus, the Apostle Paul was unabashedly Christo-centric in everything he said and did; he followed Christ in every aspect of his life and ministry.

A fifth century mosaic of the Apostle Paul

I can relate to operating like that in life. Once God got ahold of my life and Jesus became the door upon which everything I did hinged, this was, and still is, my preeminent driving force. For me, therefore, the spiritual care of others is important, and comes out of the overflow of my heart. As a Christian, I believe all spiritual care begins and ends with Jesus.

The Christian tradition emphasizes that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The apex of creation, the height of all God’s creative activity, is the formation of humanity upon the earth. Human beings alone have been created in the image and likeness of God – reflecting the divine in their care for all creation (Genesis 1:26-27).

Therefore, all persons on the good earth which God created are inherently good creatures and deserve utmost respect and common decency. So, my identity as a person is firmly rooted and grounded in the soil of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. My Christianity has the practical effect of acknowledging that each person on planet earth is inherently worthy of love, support, concern, and care. 

What is more, everything in my life centers (ideally) around Jesus. As such, I take my cues for how to extend care to others from him. For me, Jesus is the consummate caregiver. Christ entered people’s lives and their great sea of need with the gift of listening; a focus on feelings; and the power of touch.  Christ was able to listen to others because he first listened to the Father. Jesus was present to others because he was present with the Father. Jesus Christ gave love to others with the love he enjoyed with the Father and the Spirit. 

By the wounds of Christ, we are healed. Paul knew this firsthand. He needed a boatload of emotional and spiritual healing from his guilt and shame as a persecutor of faith before his conversion. Paul discovered in Christ the grace of healing, both body and soul.  

People’s stories of joy and pain, laughter and sorrow, certainty and wondering, are sacred narratives – continuously being written and revised in the heart, trying to make sense of life and faith. The Apostle Paul had a doozy of a life story to tell. Coupled with his keen intellect and training, Paul could be very persuasive.

Paul’s ministry, emulating the life of Christ, was not to force the gospel obnoxiously and belligerently onto others but to pastorally respond to everyone he encountered. Both Paul and Jesus confronted and confounded folks with incredible love.

Every person, without exception, is precious and carries within them the image of God. The personal journey and discovery of Godlikeness within each person is an emotional adventure worth taking. 

One of the great Christian theologians of the twentieth-century, the Protestant Swiss Karl Barth, believed that we are not fully human apart from mutual seeing and being seen, reciprocal speaking and listening, granting one another mutual assistance, and doing all of this with gratitude and gratefulness. Only in relation to each other, including those in need, do we thrive as people – which is why Paul was intensely personal and relational in his missionary ministry. Christianity is a fellowship with God and one another, and not an isolated odyssey. Paul always traveled with others.

Christian ministry is a symbiotic relationship between the servant and the served, expressed with grace and hope given by Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. The person in need not be Christian for this to occur, since all share the common human experience of birth, life, and death as people distinct from all other creatures, worthy of compassionate support and spiritual uplift. 

That’s the reason why I do what I do, as a believer in Jesus and a minister for Christ. And I have a hunch it was the same for Paul.

Loving God, the One who cares and saves, enable me, like your servant Paul, to speak peace, be hospitable, heal the sick, proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near, not take rejection personally, and let you do your work of changing lives and bringing them into the dance of the Trinity with Christ and your Spirit. Amen.

Paul the Missionary (Acts 13:1-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Elymas the sorcerer is struck blind by Paul, before Sergius Paulus. painting by Raphael (1483-1520)

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.

They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”

Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord. (New International Version)

Most, if not every, follower of Jesus wants to hear the voice of God’s Spirit. Yet, many don’t. Why? Because they have not yet put themselves in a position to listen and learn.

We can only hear if we are attentive. We cannot hear if we are distracted doing other things.

The Antioch Church heard the Holy Spirit speak to them because they deliberately arranged their Christian lives so that they could learn God’s Word and clearly hear God’s voice. Notice what helped them:

  1. A diversity of leaders. The Church purposely had Christians from various backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and cultures, including Barnabas, a Jewish Levite from the island of Cyprus; Simeon, a Black man from sub-Saharan Africa; Lucius, a Roman from North Africa; and Manaen, an upper class Jew from Judea. They knew that the Spirit’s voice was not limited to one particular group of people, and could come to anyone.
  2. Worship and fasting. Together, the prophets and teachers worshipped the Lord and committed themselves to the spiritual practice of fasting. They knew that focusing on God by abstaining from food for a time, and using that time for prayer, would help them be ready to hear and respond to the Spirit.

As a result, the Church heard the Holy Spirit’s instructions for them to send Barnabas and Saul [Paul] as missionaries to the Gentiles. The Christians obeyed God, blessed the team, and sent them off to do their work.

It was the missionaries practice to find the Jewish synagogues wherever they went. There they would proclaim the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of divine promises to the people. Early on, Barnabas and Paul encountered Elymas, an esoteric individual who had the ear of the Roman authority in Paphos, a city in Cyprus.

Elymas was, frankly, a spiritual pest who kept interfering with Paul’s ministry to the Roman official. Paul, having many gifts of the Spirit, saw exactly who Elymas was – a windbag who deceived and cheated people for his own advantage.

Paul got down to it with Elymas, bluntly informing him that he has finally come up against God himself, and his trickery is over. Paul declared that Elymas was about to go blind for a good long time. And sure enough, the supposed magician was plunged immediately into a shadowy mist; he stumbled around, begging people to take his hand and show him the way.

It was only fitting that a person who promoted dark ways and crooked paths should be subject to that darkness and have to grope around for a time.

When the Roman official saw what happened, he became a believer on the spot, full of enthusiasm over what Barnabas and Paul were saying about Jesus.

So began years of ministry for the Apostle Paul, missionary to the Gentiles. There never seemed to be a dull moment with him around, making gracious waves of good news for those coming to God; and a tsunami of judgment for people, like Elymas, who were stuck in their selfish ways.

Paul, like Jesus, demonstrated his authority over the forces of darkness. He thus proved himself in Christian mission. The conversion experience and the commissioning of Paul became real and complete at the beginning of this missionary journey.

It is from this point on that the former Saul is now consistently referred to as Paul – signifying his change of status as a person who once opposed Christ to one who is dedicated to serving Christ and making him known throughout the Roman Empire.

Years of mature learning, spiritual growth, and discovering Jesus went into Saul’s life before he then became the missionary Paul. Although Paul was an extremely gifted person with a large intellect, he still needed to go through what we all must go through in the Christian life – put the time and effort into spiritual growth and maturity needed within the church, in order to go out and change the world with the good news of Jesus.

Gracious and almighty God, you have given pastors and teachers to equip us to do your work and to build up the church, the Body of Christ. Help us all together to realize unity in the faith, and knowledge of your Son, so that we will be spiritually mature in Christ, in whose name we are bold to pray. Amen.