So What…

…does that mean for my family?

Where in the Word? Acts 21:1-16 No Turning Back

Cross Reference Verse: Psalm 121:1-2

“I lift up my eyes to the hills-

Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the LORD,

The Maker of heaven and earth”

…can we talk about?

No man is an island…

…but sometimes it can sure feel like we are.

Gather your family around and ask one person to volunteer to go out of the room for a moment. Tell them that when they come back they will have a task to do. When your volunteer is outside the room, give each member of your family something to tell the person (“find a book and bring it here,” “get the ketchup out of the refrigerator,” etc). Then call the brave soul back in. Instruct him that he is to do one thing and one thing only. Begin to go around the room with each person giving their instruction. After all have been given, remind the person that they can only do one thing. Which one will it be?

You may get puzzled looks and more specific questions, but each person can only advise the volunteer to do what they told him. What happens? Frustration? Maybe surrender? Or maybe one of the tasks actually does get chosen over the others. At the point of making the decision, the volunteer may have felt a bit like an island (one getting plummeted by a storm of confusion). There were several people around offering instruction, but in the end, the decision had to be made alone.

Paul is making a choice that goes against what his friends are urging him to do. Both sides, the Bible tells us, seem to be getting messages from the Holy Spirit (Paul in Acts 20:22, and the friends in Acts 21: 4, 11). It was probably a bit of a lonely place. In fact, Paul’s response to his friends was that they were “breaking his heart“(21:13). Paul knew that his ultimate authority was God, and it was God to whom he had to answer. Despite the loving and caring motivation behind his friends’ urgings, in the end they were not able to make the decision for him. Paul was prepared to die for Christ, and he was going to Jerusalem.

We have decisions to make in our lives that cause us to feel like islands. There may be loving friends surrounding us, but the decision remains ours. We cannot answer to God for what someone else thinks we should do with our lives. We only answer to God for what God thinks we should do with our lives. Sometimes we search for direction but we still don’t know. I wish God would talk to me out of a burning bush or paint the sky when I say the correct response to my multiple choice question, but He doesn’t usually communicate to us so directly. Sometimes He uses our friends to impart wisdom to us, and sometimes He makes us stand alone. But in the middle of the loneliness, He reminds us that He is there. He urges us…

…to lift our eyes to the hills.

…to rest and know that He is God.

…to seek Him because we will find Him.

…can we pray for?

Let’s pray that we will find God in the middle of hard decisions. Let’s also pray for the humility to say “God’s will be done” in all situations, especially the ones we are the least sure of.