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- Apr 25, 2006
- Messages
- 18,404
Drawing the line
'take up the whole armour of God' EPHESIANS 6:13
Simon the Sorcerer was doing good business. The people '...followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic' (Acts 8:11 NIV). But to everyone's astonishment he chose to accept Paul's gospel message and got baptised. Sadly though, before long, traces of his old ways emerged; he offered Paul money to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit! How did the apostle handle this? Simple, he confronted this flaky guy with the truth in Jesus name, saying: 'Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.' (Acts 8:22 NIV). You see, Paul knew something that every good pastor knows; when a new Christian starts turning back to their old ways you must quickly crack on and deal with it or they'll end up hurting themselves and other people too. Being fuzzy and soft in those moments helps no-one. For all of us, whether disciples for 10 minutes or 10 years, the forces of evil around us are real, and we can't just ignore them and hope they'll play nice or maybe just go away. To fight and win you must know what you are up against. There'll be times when you have to be decisive and draw a line saying 'That's it, the other side of this line is out of bounds for me now that I follow Jesus.' Do you need to draw or re-draw some lines around your life today?
written by Bob Gass
'take up the whole armour of God' EPHESIANS 6:13
Simon the Sorcerer was doing good business. The people '...followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic' (Acts 8:11 NIV). But to everyone's astonishment he chose to accept Paul's gospel message and got baptised. Sadly though, before long, traces of his old ways emerged; he offered Paul money to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit! How did the apostle handle this? Simple, he confronted this flaky guy with the truth in Jesus name, saying: 'Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.' (Acts 8:22 NIV). You see, Paul knew something that every good pastor knows; when a new Christian starts turning back to their old ways you must quickly crack on and deal with it or they'll end up hurting themselves and other people too. Being fuzzy and soft in those moments helps no-one. For all of us, whether disciples for 10 minutes or 10 years, the forces of evil around us are real, and we can't just ignore them and hope they'll play nice or maybe just go away. To fight and win you must know what you are up against. There'll be times when you have to be decisive and draw a line saying 'That's it, the other side of this line is out of bounds for me now that I follow Jesus.' Do you need to draw or re-draw some lines around your life today?
written by Bob Gass
