PRAY: God, help me spend my life in such a way that it brings honor to you.

READ: Acts 20:1-38

How we spend our lives reveals how we value the impact of the gospel of Christ on our lives. Those who value Christ will spend their lives in a particular way. Paul reveals this in his farewell words to the Ephesian elders saying, “…I don’t care what happens to me, as long as I finish the work the Lord Jesus gave me to do. And this work is to tell the good news about God’s gift of undeserved grace” (v 24). The Holy Spirit directs him to go to Jerusalem with only one thing being clear to him—he will suffer and be jailed. With persecution imminent, Paul asserts that the true value of his life is tied to how he spends his life in furthering the kingdom of God.

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PRAY: Father, thank you for not only saving me, but also using me. Help me see your message as good news. Let me speak in such a way that great numbers believe. Unless you speak through me, I labor in vain. You are in control. I am not. I trust your outcomes over my opinions. Amen.

READ: Acts 14:1-20

REFLECT:

Sometimes we allow people’s response to the gospel to dictate our worth and faithfulness.

In Acts 14 Paul and Barnabas receive multiple responses to the gospel being preached. In Iconium they speak “in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believe” (v 1). However, not many verses later, we read that Paul and Barnabas learn of the city’s plan to “mistreat them and to stone them” (v 6) so they flee.

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PRAY: Father in Heaven, thank you for the invitation to engage with you in prayer. Thank you for meeting with me in prayer and worship of you. Give me a desire to know you more and to dedicate a portion of each day to meeting with you in prayer.

READ: Acts 16:13, 16, 25

REFLECT:

Acts 16 introduces us to three people who gain salvation and freedom in Jesus’ name. Lydia the business woman, a slave girl possessed by an evil spirit and the Philippian jailer are three people from very different walks of life. Yet these three conversion stories share a common thread: prayer.

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