November 21 - Acts 21-23: The Full Message

Have you ever had to be the bearer of bad news?  Or speak a difficult message?  Or be the "heavy" in a group where everyone else is light and cheerful?  The party-pooper, the wet blanket, the odd duck. It's not the role we pray for or seek, but it was the God-given purpose of Agabus in the early church and in the life of Paul.

It was about this same time that some prophets came to Antioch from Jerusalem.  One of them named Agabus stood up one day and, prompted by the Spirit, warned that a severe famine was about the devastate the country.  (The famine actually came during the rule of Claudius.)  So the disciples decided that each of them would send whatever they could to their fellow Christians in Judea to help out.  They sent Barnabas and Saul to deliver the collection to the leaders in Jerusalem.  (11:27-30)

After several days of visiting, a prophet from Judea by the name of Agabus came down to see us.  He went right up to Paul, took Paul's belt, and in a dramatic gesture, tied himself up, hands and feet.  He said, 'This is what the Holy Spirit says:  The Jews in Jerusalem are going to tie up the man who owns this belt just like this and hand him over to godless unbelievers.' 

When we heard that, we and everyone there that day begged Paul not to be stubborn and persist in going to Jerusalem.  But Paul wouldn't budge:  'Why all this hysteria?  Why do you insist on making a scene and making it even harder for me?  You're looking at this backward.  The issue in Jerusalem is not what they do to me, whether arrest or murder, but what the Master Jesus does through my obedience.  Can't you see that?'   (21:10-13)

Was Agabus trying to scare the church or Paul or deter him from God's calling?  It doesn't seem that way. The Holy Spirit prompted him to speak these things and he wasn't telling the church or Paul what to do, only what would happen according to the prophecy that was given to him.  It was an opportunity for these new believers to live freely - free from the expectations of everything working out, not placing their hope in escape or safety, but placing their hope in Jesus.

"You are now free from slavery to the demands of self:  for recognition, for life to go as you want, for good health and prosperity, for freedom from emptiness, and for the experience of fullness.  You are now free to live for one purpose, and it is toward that one purpose that the wishing-forward life within you wells up.... You are free to advance the only plan whose promise of joy will be kept.  You are free to tell people the full message of this new life, even as Stephen did by his death, as Paul did by his difficult missionary journeys and imprisonment, and as Agabus did through the two prophecies I gave him.... You are now free to really live!"  (66LL)

Does the idea that we will not have our best lives now free you up?  Does the hard news that we will suffer - and through that suffering experience true joy and peace in Christ - cause you to 'wish forward' instead of seeking satisfaction with life now?   I'm only beginning to get glimpses of this.  Only peeking at the freedom that is available in the "full message of this new life."

"Lead us, O Father, to Thy heavenly rest, However rough and steep the pathway be, Through joy or sorrow, as Thou deemest best, Until our lives are perfected in Thee" (William Henry Burleigh)