The third missionary journey of Paul was drawing to an end. The Holy Spirit warned Paul and his companion many times that prison and hardships were facing them. However, Paul answered, “I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” The hardships the Holy Spirit foretold did not frightened Paul, because to fulfill God’s will was Paul’s only goal.
Paul said that he “served the Lord with great humility and with tears…” There may be tears in your services, but they are not tears of sorrow. God counts every tear we shed for His Kingdom, and He list our tears on His scroll. When the new heaven and the new earth arrive, God will wipe our tears with His own hands.
Paul served God with great humility. We should humble ourselves when we are serving God, but being humble does not mean telling ourselves “I can’t.” Being humble is to be willing to think less of, not belittling ourselves. Being humble is to be willing to lay down ourselves and to obey. Being humble is to admit our insufficiency, not denying our strength. Being humble is to confess your mistakes, not compromising the Truth.
God is our Lord. We are the good and faithful servants when we are willing to humble ourselves to serve Him. In our services, we will gradually learn to be like Jesus Christ. We will value others above ourselves because we learned about the difficulties in services. As for those who only criticize others but not willing to serve, their problem is that they value themselves over others. Our God is a glorious God. Pray that God open the eyes of our hearts so that we can see the glory of God. Only when we see God’s glory can we put our lives behind us to serve God, like Paul did.
The Holy Spirit bestows ointment and power upon us. God’s word is our guidance to the will and principle of God. Because we have the words of God, we can fulfill God’s will, and not be led astray, with the help of the Holy Spirit. In full armor of God mentioned in Ephesians 6, only the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, functions to attack. God’s words is harmful to the enemy. We need to defend ourselves, but we also need to launch attacks against the enemy. Take football games for example, if all the members in a team choose to stand in front of the goal, and no one goes out to shoot, they would lose if the other team manage to get just one ball into the goal. If the team did not miss even one ball, it would only be a tie. Hence, there will be a chance to win only if we attack courageously and shooting for the goal.
The words of God is not hard to read if only you are willing to read them. May we swallow down God’s words in great quantity, making God’s words our food and our weapon so that we can fight against the dark forces.
