A Call To The Remnant

Act 21:13  Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. 

How many times, brothers and sisters, have we been advised by saints not to do this or to do that? Everywhere Paul went it was clear that all knew that when he went to Jerusalem that he would suffer. Yet Paul was of a different sort. He knew right from the beginning that he would suffer. Never tell anyone not to do something just because you “know,’ it will not end well. It may not end favorably as we measure it by the flesh or by our own emotions, but the providence of God overrides what we believe to be right or wrong.

Oftentimes we are simply adding to the difficulty of the one we are trying to help. No doubt Paul, like the rest of us, would have had fears and apprehensions about what was to happen to him when he went to Jerusalem. In his spirit he was bound and determined to go for he was “ready not only to be bound but also to die.” I think if we do not have that kind of spirit, we must never try and persuade someone not to do something on the basis of our love for them or the fact that we would never do what they are now bound and determined to do. Our love for someone and our emotions, cannot be allowed to override the direction of another. That other is the servant of the most High God and God alone must determine his fate.

If we are going to err, let us err on being determined to serve God no matter what. If someone is dying of cancer, don’t tell them what to do. If someone is going to move half way around the world with their family, to a dangerous country, do not advise them not to. Jim Elliot died on the remote bank of a river in the middle of nowhere. Imagine you knew that before he left to go to the jungle. Is it your job to dissuade him? In your human reasoning you it makes no sense, but of course Jim was willing to be bound or to die for the cause of Christ. Who could ever have foretold how that story would end, how the whole tribe would be saved, how the very man that killed him would be saved. The providence of God. The mysterious works of God. All He needs is willing servants who “love not their lives unto death,’ but rather, who stand upon the Blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.