Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

71 - Repentance and Faith

If we really understand something, we can explain it to a child. Even if it’s something very difficult like the theory of relativity. But if all we can do is repeat the words or phrases someone said to us, we don’t understand, we’re simply parroting back what we heard. Particularly when it comes to religious matters, people seem content to dutifully repeat the right words without ever asking themselves the deeper question of, “What did I just say?” The problem is God is always looking at a person’s heart to see if certain attitudes and beliefs are really present. He’s not concerned whether or not we said it right, He wants it to be right. And above everything else, for a person to be saved, God is looking for two things: repentance and faith. Has that person really repented, and does that person really believe? Because if they haven’t, even if they say the right words, they’re still separated from God. And to make matters worse, the process has deceived them into thinking that because they said the right words, they’ve pleased God.

As if he’d walked into a court of law and raised his right hand swearing to tell the truth, Paul called together the Ephesian elders to act as his witnesses, and as if he were under oath, he stood before them and gave an account of the years he spent in their city. This speech is Paul’s evaluation of his ministry among them. Had he faithfully done what God sent him there to do?

70 - Walk With Me

What an amazing 24 hours! From Sunday evening, when the church gathered in Troas, to Monday evening, when Paul reached Assos, he didn’t stop ministering the entire time. He lectured and dialogued all night, eating very little, and then at morning light, having had no sleep, he began a 30 mile walk which required at least 10-12 hours of strenuous walking over hilly terrain. This is almost 30 years after he was converted. Paul has to be in his late 50’s or early 60’s. He’s not a young man. And I think his eyesight was poor and he needed assistance when he traveled (Gal 4:15; 6:11). 

These few verses show us the depth to which Paul freely gave of himself, as well as any passage in Acts. He virtually denied his own physical needs for 24 hours in order to give everything he possibly could to these believers. And he hadn’t even planted this church. Most of them weren’t his converts, but they belonged to Jesus and they needed to be discipled. They hungrily listened and asked him questions all night. Then when it came time for his team to leave in order to board the ship, someone must have come up to him and said they desperately needed to talk with him, possibly a leader or a group of leaders, who were struggling with a situation in their church. But there was simply no more time. Or was there? What if the team went ahead and got on board the ship and told the captain that Paul would walk instead of sail to the next port? He could catch up to the ship in Assos. That would buy him an extra day so he could talk with these believers while they walked. So, of course he would. He would gladly forgo his own need of sleep to carve out a chunk of time from a hopelessly busy schedule…and give it to others who needed him. He said, “Walk with me!” Will we do the same?

69 - Paul's Offering

The seven men Luke names here were representatives chosen from the different regions where Paul had planted churches. They were carrying a financial gift from their churches to the poor in Jerusalem, but Paul was bringing them to Jerusalem. They were his offering, they were the fruit of his labors, and when he arrived he would go into the Temple, the place where Jesus had spoken to him commanding him to go to the Gentiles (Ac 22:21), and there he would report to Him that he had obeyed. On the day of Pentecost, as the firstfruits of the wheat harvest were being waved before the Lord to honor Him as the Source of the harvest and to declare that the harvest was holy and belonged to Him, Paul, in his heart, would present his “firstfruits,” to honor God as the Source of all that had taken place, and declaring that the entire harvest, the multiplied thousands of new believers from all around the eastern Mediterranean, belonged to Him. Yes, Paul ministered effectively among the Gentiles, and had become “all things to all men” (1Co 9:22) to reach them, but he was still a Jew inside, and this was his heart-language of worship. He wasn’t performing a ritual, he was coming home. He had observed Pentecost all his life, but never had he presented such precious gifts as these.

In a sense, Paul is modeling that coming day in which all of us will present to Jesus the fruit of our lives. Not as a work needed to earn our way to heaven, though being fruitless is a dangerous symptom of detachment from Christ (Jn 15:2-6), but as the tangible evidence of our love for Him. When all is said and done, the only lasting treasure we will have to offer Him will be the people whose lives we have helped to draw closer to Him. 

68 - Dangerous Times

The church we read about in the Book of Acts was a tiny minority of people living in a dangerous world. We watch them in situation after situation face various forms of persecution, yet we also see them in situation after situation wisely handle whatever came at them, and continue to grow. Today, Christianity has become the largest religion on earth, yet we are still living in a dangerous world. Even though there are so many of us, we are persecuted more than any other religion. In some parts of the world believers face open persecution. It’s physical, violent and cruel. Here in the West, persecution is growing, but it’s still mainly a matter of changing attitudes. It’s primarily rejection and ridicule, but we’re beginning to experience what it feels like to be an unpopular minority. Our faith and moral values are being rejected by the dominant culture, and because this shift is only a few decades old, we’re still learning how to deal with it.

The good news is, we don’t have to look far for help. The Bible is a handbook on how to live successfully as an embattled minority. We find there, one example after another of men and women living wisely in the midst of danger. Today’s lesson is no exception. We’ll watch Paul and the believers in Ephesus navigate a city-wide riot that occurred because so many people had become real disciples of Jesus Christ. The sooner we learn from them, the safer we’ll be. 

67 - Distracted

Discovering God’s call is only the first step in a life of service. Enduring in that call is the second and most difficult step. Staying focused and continuing to do what God called us to do never goes unchallenged. The enemy never ignores a fruitful ministry, but will use every method at his disposal to try to stop it. If a person refuses to give in to moral failure, the devil will try to get them to believe heresy. If they refuse to believe heresy, he will try to lure them with riches. If they refuse the deceitfulness of riches, he will raise up people to persecute them, and if they endure persecution, then he will use one of the cruelest weapons of all, he will attack those they love. Love makes a person vulnerable to worry. We worry when those we love are struggling. So if he can’t stop us, he’ll try to distract us. He’ll use misunderstandings, betrayals, or the agony of watching loved ones walking away from God to torment us. He’ll try to exhaust us by tormenting us in the hope that he can drain our energy away from the work we’re called to do.

This is exactly what the devil was trying to do to Paul. He hadn’t been able to turn him away from his call. None of his methods had worked, so he used one church in particular, to try to distract him. And in some measure it worked (2Co 2:12, 13). Today we’ll cover only two verses in Acts. But if we look beyond the brief statements Luke makes here, and take into consideration the information Paul gives us elsewhere, we’ll discover that during those years in Ephesus, Paul was enduring an enormous amount of unseen pain. He was deeply worried about the church in Corinth.

As we watch what happened to Paul, many of us will realize we, too, have had much of our energy drained away by worry over those we love. The good news is Paul wasn’t defeated by this. In fact, his patient love for that church ultimately gave God time to win the hearts of many of those whom the enemy had tried to deceive. Yes, we’ll see the devil attack Paul, but we’ll also see Paul triumph. 

66 - The Real World

The real world has an ugly side to it. Just ask a policeman or an emergency room nurse. Beneath the surface of our society there’s a lot of suffering. People are capable of doing amazing things to themselves and others. And the same is true of the real spiritual world. It, too, has an ugly side. Many people don’t want to see that side, it frightens them. But pretending it’s not there doesn’t change reality, it just leaves us vulnerable to attack and unable to protect ourselves.

The passage we’re studying today talks about evil spirits. It shows us the power they can have over a human being, but it also shows us the power of the name of Jesus Christ. We need to be bold enough to realize that the forces we’re watching at work in ancient Ephesus are still part of our world today, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. Somewhere over the course of history, Christianity became spiritually powerless and very “scientific.” The church in the west followed our culture into a deep skepticism about the existence of a spiritual world. Even if we held onto a generic belief in God, the idea of angels or demons, or the devil himself, became something we associated with primitive, pre-scientific superstition. We thought of ourselves as enlightened, informed, increasingly in control of our own destiny. With the emergence of modern medicine and psychology, our need for God’s help grew smaller and smaller. If He wasn’t “dead,” He was at least unnecessary.

But reality tends to be stubborn. It doesn’t cease to function just because we ignore it. Sooner or later we bump into it and are forced to acknowledge its existence. And the real world has a spiritual dimension just as certainly as it has a physical one. Not only does God exist, but so do angels and demons. They’re as real as you and I. So, today, let’s see the world the way Jesus and Paul saw it… and let’s discover the authority Jesus’ name has over that world.

65 - Ministering God's Power

Passages like this are both thrilling and frustrating. It thrills us to see God’s power work through an individual to this degree, but it can also frustrate us. When we recognize what is possible, some of us are painfully reminded of what didn’t happen. It confronts us with the question: Am I moving in all the power God has made available to me? And for some, that brings up feelings of guilt and shame, and even anger.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, many Christians are committed to the idea that miracles, like these we see being performed through Paul, don’t happen anymore. They believe that at some point in time God stopped doing such miracles, so when they read passages like this they feel a great admiration for what God did during that early stage of church history, but feel no responsibility to try to do similar things today.

There is another group of Christians who will tend to skip over a passage like this, not because they don’t believe it or think such things are still possible, but because it stirs up deep emotions they don’t want to feel. Seeing miracles happen for others only reminds them of miracles that didn’t happen for them or someone they love. It raises the painful question of “why?” And there are also those who’ve grown quietly cautious. In the past they allowed their expectations to be raised to a high level only to end up disappointed and embarrassed. They didn’t become angry or unbelieving, just confused and tired of trying.

Knowing these things, and sometimes feeling the same emotions, I wanted to politely skip past these verses and move on. But I felt that displeased the Lord. Instead, He wanted us to look deeply at how He used Paul in Ephesus, so He could release us from confusion and condemnation, and teach us how to embrace more of His power, without ending up frustrated.

64 - Teaching the Word

There is nothing that replaces the hearing or reading of the Word of God. There are a number of important spiritual disciplines, all of which need to be part of our lives, but nothing has a greater impact than a daily encounter with the Bible. The temptations of our flesh are strong, and our own mind keeps trying to lead us astray, so without constant correction, without being confronted again and again by the way God thinks, we unconsciously drift back into unbelief, entertain temptation, and return to loving the world. Someone once said, “When we pray, we talk to God, but when we read the Word, He talks to us.” Though I admit the Bible isn’t the only way God talks to us, it is undoubtedly the most trustworthy way. When I try to hear God directly, my own thoughts can at times deceive me, but the plain truths and commands in the Bible never change, and are never wrong. Whenever I test the Bible by actually doing what it says, it always works.

And the Bible contains within itself a strange authority, one that’s hard to explain. If a person will pick it up and read it honestly, sooner or later they sense it’s speaking to them. How many committed atheists have tried to read it to prove to themselves it is filled with superstitious lies, only to find themselves convicted of their rebellion to a God who loves them and fearing a God who will someday bring them to judgment. It simply isn’t a silly, religious book. That’s why every vile form of human government outlaws the Bible. How often has it been labeled a dangerous book? Because it is! It’s a force to be dealt with.

I believe the primary reason our society is failing, families are failing, individuals are failing, and many Christians are failing is because people are not interacting daily with the Word of God. They are “leaning on their own understanding” (Pr 3:5) and therefore God is not guiding them. Today, we’re going to let Apollos be an example to us once again. Last week we saw his passionate love for God, but this week we’ll see his passionate commitment to study and teach the Word of God.

63 - Seeking God's Face

There are those who believe in God and those who love God. Everyone who loves Him, believes in Him, but not everyone who believes in Him, loves Him. This is because God is real. He’s a person with a distinct personality. You’ll often hear people say things like this: “I can’t believe in a God who would…” In other words, they don’t like the God they see in the Bible, and they refuse to follow a god they can’t modify until He comes up to their high standards. One distinguishing fact about people who talk like this is that they have never personally met God. It’s all theory and philosophy, because people who’ve actually met Him talk differently. They speak about Him as if He’s a person, and He’s there watching, somewhere in the room. And to be honest there’s a bit of fear left in them because He was much bigger than they originally thought. Actually, He was downright intimidating. It was obvious He had come down to their level to talk with them. In that moment, it never even crossed their mind to tell Him ways they felt He needed to change.

There are people who are looking for salvation and there are people who are looking for God. There are people who want to make sure they’ll go to heaven when they die, and people who long to be close to Him now. If you think about it, those are two wildly different motives. One is raw self-interest: “What do I have to do so God will let me into heaven?” The other is a hunger for relationship. Like a lover who feels lonely and empty apart from the one they love, this person never seems to get enough of God. They’re always pursuing Him, wanting more. They aren’t focused on His gifts or blessings, though those things seem to come along naturally for people like this, instead they’re focused on His presence. They want to sense that He’s close, they want to talk to Him. One person said it this way: “Some people seek God’s hand, others seek His face.” I would submit to you that Apollos was a man who was pursuing God, he was seeking His face.

62 - Overcoming Fear

By every appearance, the very thing Paul dreaded was happening. How many times had gangs of angry men surrounded him and dragged him to the police. In one situation after another government officials had conveniently sided with the mob. And here he was again being taken through the streets of Corinth to stand in front of the new Roman proconsul. It all felt horribly familiar. Would he be stripped and beaten publicly and then thrown into a filthy jail cell as he had in Philippi (Ac 16:19-24)? Or would the mob be allowed to take him out and stone him as they had in Lystra (Ac 14:19, 20)? But there was one thing that made this moment different from all the others. A year and a half earlier Paul had seen a vision of Jesus who told him not to be afraid, so when fear tried to surge up within Paul, he had a promise he could cling to. 

The real enemy
The real enemy is fear. Most of the bad decisions we make are made in an effort to protect ourselves from something we fear. Fear weakens us, it breaks down our defenses, and actually seems to draw to us the very thing we’re trying to flee. You might say fear is a form of faith in reverse. When we’re afraid, we’re actively believing that bad things will happen. Fear’s almost like an odor or a magnetic field. If left unchallenged, sooner or later we tend to get the very thing we feared.

The culture we live in is full of fear. If you listen to the way people talk you’ll hear it. They say, “You know what worries me is…,” or “I’m really frightened for…” Our news is full of horrible scenarios about what might happen. Books, films and music constantly envision coming catastrophes, and for that matter, so do religious materials. The effect all this has on us is to make us want to withdraw and hide. We can’t dream of great things or step out into bold, new ventures because we’re waiting for something bad to happen. And living in fear leaves people tired, sad and angry. Frightened people build walls. We limit our own possibilities, we reduce our own potential, because in our mind what we fear is as real as if it had already happened. It’s as real as if we had already seen it. So, we think of ourselves as being realistic, not fearful; as wise, not reactionary. And fearful thinking becomes a habit which gets more deeply ingrained in us as the years go by, until we’re not even aware it’s there.