Acts 23 – lessons in spiritual guidance

The apostle Paul has a sense of God’s guidance in Acts 23:11, where it records God as saying “Now you’re going to be my witness in Rome”.\r\n\r\nFrom then on Paul makes no plans of his own, and the details of various plots work together to bring Paul to Rome.\r\n\r\nWithout going into the whole story (it’s definitely worth reading in Acts) the numbers of people involved are huge.\r\n

    \r\n

  • Chief Priests, High Priests, Pharisees, Sadducees – the religious establishment.
  • \r\n

  • The Roman Captain, 2 centurions, 200 soldiers, 75 cavalry officers, 200 light infantry – the political establishment.
  • \r\n

  • 40 murderers on a pact to starve unless the kill Paul.
  • \r\n

  • And Paul’s nephew, who warns the Roman Captain of the guard of the plot to kill Paul.
  • \r\n

\r\nLet’s say around 600 people, working over 24-48 hours, which resulted in Paul being put under house arrest in Rome.\r\n\r\nSometimes Paul ‘decided to move on’ (Acts 19:21), then other times he acted on dreams, or visions, or the Spirit ‘stopped’ him. And then there were 600 unconnected people working together.\r\n\r\nIt seems that God is flexible on how he works out his purposes – with us, in us,through us, and through others.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *