Monday: Attack but No Harm
WEEK 22
MONDAY
ATTACK BUT NO HARM
Luke 21:12-15
We are meditating on the mastery of unjust suffering and pain. The Christian faith explains little and transforms everything. It takes hold of life as it is—good, bad, and indifferent—and makes the bad and indifferent into good, the good into better, the better into best, and the best into God’s best.
This is illustrated in this passage:
When they opposed and slandered him, he shook the dust from his clothes in protest and said to them, “You are responsible for your own fates! I’m innocent! From now on I’ll go to the Gentiles!” He left the synagogue and went next door to the home of Titius Justus, a Gentile God-worshipper. Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household came to believe in the Lord. Many Corinthians believed and were baptized after listening to Paul. . . .
So he stayed there for eighteen months, teaching God’s word among them. (Acts 18:6-8, 11)
Put out of the synagogue, Paul moved next door and won the ruler of the synagogue to the faith. He went beyond the Jews to the Gentiles; in doing so he got the leading Jew. And he got many Corinthians. So opposition became just opportunity.
In the midst of it all, “One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Don’t be afraid. Continue speaking. Don’t be silent. I’m with you and no one who attacks you will harm you, for I have many people in this city’” (Acts 18:9-10). Note “I’m with you, and no one who attacks you will harm you.” The Lord didn’t say, “No one will attack you”; Paul was not to be exempt from attack. But the last phrase is the important one, “will harm you.” We are not exempt from attack, but we are exempt from harm through those attacks. No attack can harm us unless we allow it to do so. It is not what happens to you but what you do with it after it does happen that determines the result. The kicking of Paul out of the synagogue kicked him into greater usefulness; he got Gentiles as well as Jews. The attacks didn’t harm him; they helped him. That happened everywhere. Dammed up here, the Christians broke out there. They had found the secret of victorious vitality. Trouble pushed them further into new territories and further into the souls of people.
O Lord, give me this secret of victorious vitality, that I shall make all attacks upon me into an opportunity to exhibit the spirit of Jesus. In Christ’s name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: In Christ I am invulnerable, for everything serves those who serve Christ.