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Living for What Really Matters
PHILIPPIANS
After Paul cast out the demon and her owners realized their fortune-teller would no longer make
them money, they were livid. They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace
before the chief leaders of the city.
Reread Acts 16:22-24. What happened to Paul and Silas as a result of this situation?
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Wait…didn’t God direct Paul and his companions to Philippi? Didn’t He orchestrate them
meeting Lydia and teaching the women at the river, and even healing that poor girl who was a
victim of slavery?
Here’s the thing we can’t forget: we can be 100 percent in God’s will and still go through hard
stuff. Sometimes God’s will takes us through the hard stuff.
Difficulty brings a rich wisdom that can’t be formed elsewhere. If you can have joy in the
darkness, you truly understand life with Christ. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not even saying you’ll
feel clarity and understanding during every second of hard seasons. But I can promise that clinging
to and loving Christ in the midst of even the bleakest situations will develop you into a woman of
incredible depth, strength, and empathy.
Think for a moment about the painful circumstances Paul and Silas found themselves in—and
the way they chose to respond. Can you imagine being fastened into stocks and still spending hours
praying and singing hymns?
I’ve seen enough movies to understand the concept of stocks. And when I tap on this verse
(Acts 16:24) in the BLB app and find the definition in the Interlinear/Concordance, my
visualization is confirmed:
The stocks (ξλον or xýlon, pronounced xoo'-lon): “a log or timber with holes in which the
feet, hands, neck of prisoners were inserted and fastened with thongs (strips of leather).”
I’m truly not sure how you could breathe, let alone sing, while tortured and bent in this way,
yet Paul and Silas did so loudly enough that the guards and prisoners were listening. Everyone
around them got to see the depth of their relationship with God, even in the midst of an awful
situation. Without God allowing Paul and Silas’s imprisonment, these men in the jail would not
have learned of the love and light of Jesus in such an incredible way.
What happened around midnight?
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