Here are a few samples of daily devotionals in our “Footsteps of Paul” series, Each day you will receive one SMS to read and reflect on in your own time.
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In the footsteps of Paul #1
Hanging in my garden are 3 flycatchers. Inside the jars, I place a solution that stinks. Sometimes I stand there and watch as the flies swarm around looking for a way in. I have killed thousands of flies in these traps. Every time I pass one, I give it a swirl and drown the 20+ flies buzzing around inside.
As I stood there one day, I asked myself, “Can’t they see the hundreds of drowned comrades in the solution? Can’t they see they are going to share the same fate! They are all trying so hard to get in the holes at the top. They will find the stench and be trapped. Then I asked myself, “Can’t people in the world see the stench of things they are attracted to; swarming around things that lead to death. Why do people choose that option over what God offers? The evidence is insurmountable! Jesus is who He claimed to be! This world is an orbiting cemetery and God has offered us a way of escape.
Seasons, years, and lifetimes are brought to the shores of eternity like driftwood on an incoming tide. The tide returns and gathers them away and they are lost forever. A person’s life stretches like a shadow at evening and then fades into the darkness. And for what has it been. Why are so many people willing to live and die and never know why? Why would you want to go out of this world not knowing why you came into it?
At the end of it all, we all end up at the judgment seat of God. (2Cor.5:10.) Our whole life comes into review – and what good has it been? What will you be able to point to and say, “This is my life?”
We are going to study the life of one man whose life was not wasted. A man whose deeds will be written in the history book of eternity. This man’s career best enables us to understand the dawn of Christianity. A man who loosed Christianity from the ceremonialism of Judaism and inspired the world of paganism with joy and hope.
In the Footsteps of Paul #2
It has often happened that the destroyers of a creed or system have been bred and trained in the inmost bosom of the system which they were destined to shake or destroy. Huss, Jerome, and Luther had taken the Augustinian vows. Pascal had been trained a Jesuit. Wesley and Whitefield were clergymen in the church of England. Spurgeon and Ellen White were born in the decaying Methodism of Britain and America. The apostle Paul was a Jew of the Sanhedrin. (The governing body of Judaism.)
From a study of the Biblical documents, we conclude that Saul (who became Paul) was born in the same decade as Christ Himself, and it appears that he was about 7 years old when Christ was born. Saul passed his earliest years in Tarsus, the famous capital of a Roman province. Today it is an Islamic city in Turkey, 20kms from the Mediterranean, and still bears the same name. It was then a centre of commercial enterprise and political power. Saul was raised in this ‘pagan’ city but under a strict Jewish environment such that youth were not permitted to read the Song of Solomon until they were 21.
From the way he quoted the OT we know he was raised on the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Bible. This becomes obvious from the way he freely quotes from it (often from memory,) in all his letters and speeches. He knew it so well that his sentences and thoughts are constantly moulded by its rhythm and expression.
Had Saul put the question to the Great Master, “What shall I do to be saved” and heard the reply, “Keep the commandments,“ it is certain from his own testimony that he would have been able to reply, “All these things have I kept from my youth.” He even might have added, “and very much besides.” He was a tell-me-anything-more-to do-and–I will-do-it Pharisee. Yet we trace in his epistles how bitterly he felt the hollowness of this outward obedience. Even moral obedience could not silence the voice of conscience, or satisfy the yearning of the soul. (c.f.Phil.3:4-6)