67 - Distracted

Discovering God’s call is only the first step in a life of service. Enduring in that call is the second and most difficult step. Staying focused and continuing to do what God called us to do never goes unchallenged. The enemy never ignores a fruitful ministry, but will use every method at his disposal to try to stop it. If a person refuses to give in to moral failure, the devil will try to get them to believe heresy. If they refuse to believe heresy, he will try to lure them with riches. If they refuse the deceitfulness of riches, he will raise up people to persecute them, and if they endure persecution, then he will use one of the cruelest weapons of all, he will attack those they love. Love makes a person vulnerable to worry. We worry when those we love are struggling. So if he can’t stop us, he’ll try to distract us. He’ll use misunderstandings, betrayals, or the agony of watching loved ones walking away from God to torment us. He’ll try to exhaust us by tormenting us in the hope that he can drain our energy away from the work we’re called to do.

This is exactly what the devil was trying to do to Paul. He hadn’t been able to turn him away from his call. None of his methods had worked, so he used one church in particular, to try to distract him. And in some measure it worked (2Co 2:12, 13). Today we’ll cover only two verses in Acts. But if we look beyond the brief statements Luke makes here, and take into consideration the information Paul gives us elsewhere, we’ll discover that during those years in Ephesus, Paul was enduring an enormous amount of unseen pain. He was deeply worried about the church in Corinth.

As we watch what happened to Paul, many of us will realize we, too, have had much of our energy drained away by worry over those we love. The good news is Paul wasn’t defeated by this. In fact, his patient love for that church ultimately gave God time to win the hearts of many of those whom the enemy had tried to deceive. Yes, we’ll see the devil attack Paul, but we’ll also see Paul triumph.