And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (Acts 16:7)
I have one question today: why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit allow you to do something that is good and inherently a part of your vocational calling in the grace of God? If you read this passage in its entirety, you will find that Paul and Silas are out on a mission and very explicitly God stops them from preaching the gospel that they have perilously been preaching to be preached in Asia. The question is why?
At the end of the day Paul and Silas obey, which is the important part, but I want to run through the emotions that may have been going through Paul and Silas. If it were you or me, we would have been pissed off, to say the least; or rather, to be more politically correct, we would have been very upset, and you can multiply that by the tenth power. I know I just painted our volatile emotions in a rosy hue of cool, but you understand that this probably was a hard command to obey if you were Paul or Silas. They are people, they have been working hard, and all of a sudden, through their progression of their work, they are being blocked by the same God who sent them on this mission.
I mean, there is good work to be done, why would God tell us not to do good work? Most people would go on to read the conclusion of the passage and say that closing this door and opportunity led immediately to another door and opportunity to open up in a different part of the country that also desperately needed the gospel, but that response seems like an easy excuse to finding out why God would have strategized in such a way. But then again, that is probably the answer to why God would have planned this sudden and unexpected route of missionary activity for Paul and Silas– God wanted to save some souls in very unlikely places and Paul was available to be used for just that.
The next time we hit a “roadblock” in our life progressions, when we are asking God “why are you stopping me here?” I want you to keep in mind that God’s strategy for you may be murky and unclear to you now, but his purpose is for you to be obedient and heed the calling on your life to reach somebody you really didn’t expect to reach, at a time you didn’t really think it fit to reach him or her. What has the Spirit of Jesus not allowed you to do?
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