Therefore choose
Press the play button to watch the video above or press 'more' to read the transcript of the daily devotion below. Please read Acts 13:38-52 (use your own Bible or use the link above to access the in-App Bible).
Therefore choose.
Decisions, decisions, so many decisions to make in life. As I type this my wife and I are booking a holiday. Where should we go, which hotel should we book. Should we go cheaper and have some spending money, or book a nicer place which is closer to the sights. First-world problems, undoubtedly, as others face far starker choices about what to do without today.
Some choices don’t really matter. We’re lucky enough to be able to afford a holiday and of the topics before us both will give us a nice time away. Other choices, like those facing the people in today’s reading, are literally life and death.
Paul and Barnabas have been faithful to their calling and have been successful, in fact very successfully, preaching the gospel in Antioch. Imagine if this scene happened at your church, or any church in our diocese, where ‘almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord’ (v.44). Wow! Yes, please, more of this! But with gospel-faithfulness comes demonic persecution: ‘when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him’ (v.45). This has always been the case, and always will be the case, until our Lord returns. People are forced to choose and we don’t really like making decisions.
We like to prevaricate. We like to imagine that all will be well, whichever road we take. But some decisions are necessary and critical. Life or death. Heaven or hell. Light or darkness. We must pick!
And then, when we have picked, we must share, we must tell, we must offer the same life or death choice to others. To not pick life is, by default, to choose death, and so many are sleep walking into death. We’re afraid, I know I am, because we do not want the opposition which comes with clearly, and faithfully proclaiming the gospel… and yet lives depend upon it.
Therefore choose.
Let us pray: Heavenly Father, thank you for the gospel which gives us the possibility of choosing life. Help us not to prevaricate but to choose the Lord Jesus, and then offer Him to our friends and loved ones. Amen.