How often are you like me and we hear or read over a passage of scripture as if it is the newspaper and I am skimming to find a headline or a phrase that catches my eye. I think about how many times I have heard and read the story of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 14. We looked at this text yesterday in church and it struck me while we were reading it. Paul was stoned and left for dead. I think that he was beaten up and bruised by the stoning, but God performs a miracle and Paul lives. He being Paul gets up and returns to the city. Furthermore he then leaves and backtracks through the cities that he has just come from strengthening and encouraging the believers along the way. He also shares with them that tribulations, trials, persecutions will come and are part of the way of Jesus.
This all struck me because I defintely have never been stoned maybe verbally abused sometimes. This makes me think of my friends in the Navy who are stationed in Japan. They are verbally abused when they take a stand for Christ. We need to look at the example that Paul gave us and get up and be about the business of building into the body of Christ.
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Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
With that perspective, how can we not embrace hardships? Without that perspective, how can we?
This is why I have been thinking alot about how important our perspective is. I taught in our college ministry one Sunday morning and I taught out of Col 3 with the idea of having a proper perspective. It is, to use seminary jargin, necessary that we create a theology in the areas. That is to have our minds understand the way Jesus thinks so as to respond properly with our actions.
highly important to have that perspective and then stand and stand firm. amen.
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