I Am Ready

Daily Reading: Acts 21

Scripture Focus: When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. (Acts 21.12)

Devotional Thought: Have you ever been in a situation where you know the Lord is calling you to do something, but everyone around you is trying to talk you out of it?  Not just the know-it-alls, but your closest friends or maybe even your family.  Some of the arguments they may use are:  “Are you sure it’s really God’s voice you’re hearing?” or “I think you should be reasonable about this. God would never expect this of you!”  And, while I think it is wise to heed the counsel of other believers around you, there are simply times when you will know - in spite of all of the “common-sense, reasonable” advice - that God wants you to step out onto the water and trust him.

In this chapter, Paul is ready to head to Jerusalem at the Holy Spirit’s leading.  Before he left, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea and warned Paul that going to Jerusalem would not be easy.  Paul’s friends and fellow believers who heard this prophesy begged him not to go.  Instead of letting himself be persuaded by these well-meaning friends, he responds with a rebuke: “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus" (v. 13).  Paul intends to obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit no matter what the risk.

Paul’s response to his well-meaning friends should remind us that we have to trust the Lord’s leading, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of other believers.  "I am ready..."  Are you?

Jenny

Prayer: Lord, it is so easy to succumb to the safe, to side with the sensible.  But help me, Lord, to always follow you, to say, "I am ready."  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 73.12-20

12 Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.

13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.

14 For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

15 If I had said, "I will speak thus," I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,

17 until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.

18 Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.

19 How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!

20 Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.