Christian Labor

Acts 24:24 ESV

After Some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus.

The smell of buffet pizza and fried chicken filled the cool night air outside of the Pizza Ranch. Twenty-two months had come to an end. I helped their grandfather fill his old Jeep with all the things kids can become attached to in almost two years. An inflatable bouncy horse, dolls, bicycle, clothes, cars, trains… All the things we know they love, that will make their time back with their mom feel like home for them. Two years of work, witnessing, praying, pressing, watching, looking for opportunities to sow seed, all apparently for naught. Casting it upon the waters in the hands of a sovereign God is all that is what is left to do. Crying and thinking as we drive home trying to prepare for Christmas next week.

Such is following a sovereign God. Such is faith and belief in such a good God. In the Passage of Acts, we see Paul’s two years of evangelism to a culturally mixed family. We are told in the versus preceding this that “Felix, having a rather accurate knowledge of the way” was not inclined to give the Jewish officials all they would desire in connection with Paul. This was the foundation of his time with Paul. He knew something of Christianity, and that rather accurate, and so he kept Paul with reasonable liberty. Yet, being a somewhat corrupt official, he would visit Paul hoping to get a bribe from him. In these visits Paul would speak of Christ. Paul would reason from the scriptures “about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment”, he would do this over and over. Paul would preach and teach to Felix and his wife, he would reason and pray for Felix, that he might come to faith. In all human estimation it was for naught. Little to show for it but a backhanded slap as Felix would exit the scene of scripture.

After all the work Paul had done, hall the hours talking with Felix and his wife, all the time praying for his heart to soften, his ears to open, his mind to accept, we are left with this word “Felix…desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison.” Not only had Paul’s work not brought Felix to repentance, Felix actually wished to help the “enemy”!

God is sovereign. How many soldiers were present to hear Paul reasoning? How many servants would listen in to Paul disputing and answering the questions of this man, so well and so powerfully that John Wesley notes Felix was an “Almost Christian”? How many of the answers to Felix’s question bear fruit in the letters Paul writes to the Churches? Such are things that rest soundly in the hand of our sovereign God. We are told that God’s word does not return void (Isaiah 55:11) and so these actions and places to accomplish his purpose, and we rejoice.

Two years of Christian work are not wasted. It may be two years working in a Church with no visible sign of change. Two years raising an infant only to have them taken from you. A few months spent nurturing a child that will die in the womb. Decades spent praying for a husband to repent and find God. Such are the works of the church, and such work is never fruitless. May we continue in the Work.

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO