Why did they take Paul for a murderer? Because a serpent fastened itself around his hand.His momentary ‘set back’ was, for them, a sign that even God had been fighting against him.Little did they know that God had brought him there as a bait to pull out the viper and destroy it in the fire, at last.They lacked a proper discernment of the situation.They misread the signs.
One also wonders how much the enemy might have sought to use the event to pester Paul’s mind.Maybe Paul wondered, “I was saved from a shipwreck only a moment ago.Then I met a welcoming fire which seemed to me a sign of God’s intervention, only now to face a viper!Opposition, arrest and imprisonment, shipwreck, divine deliverance, and now a viper!Is God against me?Could the barbarians be right after all?Could I be wrong? Don’t they seem to have a better discernment of the situation than I?”Doubts.
Like those ignorant barbarians, there are many today who are prone to seeing every attack from the regions of Lucifer as a sign of God’s judgment.Your troubles, they suppose, are confirmation of their impression that you are a bad person.Don’t mind.With time, your glorious triumph shall be all the proof they need, that your God, He is God indeed.Amen.
YOU ARE READING
THE LAST CHAPTER of Your Life
SpiritualA book is remembered more often for how it ends than for how it starts. We are a book that God is writing. Often, the tricky devil, when he can no more stand the zeal of our early days, takes a break from the middle chapters of our life, waiting t...
