Paul had an awfully lively life. It’s exhausting simply to examine his missionary journeys: the many occasions he was shipwrecked, persecuted, imprisoned, and overwhelmed. Finally, he was accused of varied crimes by the Jewish authorities and exercised his proper as a Roman citizen to attraction his case to Caesar (Acts 25:11). When he obtained to Rome, after one other adventurous journey (Acts 27:1–28:14), he was positioned beneath home arrest, with a soldier to guard him (Acts 28:16).
Imagine how he felt. After spending most of his grownup life touring round the complete Mediterranean world, preaching and instructing and arguing, and later baptizing and founding church buildings, all of a sudden he discovered himself confined to a rented lodging, on their lonesome aside from a guard, in a spot the place the new motion of Christianity was considered with suspicion. What did he do?
He discovered a brand new means of exercising discipleship. Instead of a lifetime of fixed movement, he discerned a name to larger stability. Instead of looking for out and preaching to massive teams, he “received all who came to him.” He responded to a name to radical change.
With the assist of the Holy Spirit, so can we. Retirement, the empty-nest expertise, widowhood—all these states of life would possibly name for the type of radical change that Paul skilled. Can we let go of our assumptions about how God could also be calling us?
—Excerpted from Answering God’s Call by Barbara Lee