Surrender to Move Forward

Acts 19:8–10 (CSB)

Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly over a period of three months, arguing and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became hardened and would not believe, slandering the Way in front of the crowd, he withdrew from them, taking the disciples, and conducted discussions every day in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This went on for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.

This sounds like a strange idea, but sometimes you must retreat to get where you need to be.  It’s true that sometimes you have to choose to sacrifice something to advance your main objective. This is true even in our lives as disciples. A great example of this can be found in Acts 19:8-10.

The apostle Paul is in the city of Ephesus, he’s been in the process of being an evangelist and a disciple-maker.  Paul’s typical tradition was to first base his mission in a new city from a local synagogue. Using a synagogue made sense since Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and Paul himself was Jewish. Using a Jewish center of worship seems like a natural branching-off point to share a Jewish message of Jesus Christ with the surrounding community.  In the first three months in Ephesus, Paul was successful in disciple-making and converted some of the people to faith in Jesus. However, at the end of that three months, Paul started to get resistance from other members of the Jewish community who had made up their minds to reject Jesus.

At this point, Paul had to decide whether to sit there and fight back against stubborn people or stick with what he had been called to do. He decided to stick with what he had been doing. However, for Paul to stick to his goals, he had to make a concession. That concession was leaving behind the synagogue for the betterment of his disciples.  However, that was going to cause another issue.

The second issue was asking people who spent their entire life comfortable worshiping in the synagogue to step away from their place of worship. In short, to take a lifetime of tradition and throw it out the window for another cause.  You see, part of Paul’s idea for leaving behind the synagogue was leaving behind the toxic environment that would inhibit his disciple’s ability to learn. After all, the purpose of a disciple is to be a person that learns from the person doing the discipling. As a former teacher, I can testify that a distracted classroom does not lead to successful learning.  

While Paul could choose to take his teaching to another place, to quote the old idiom, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Paul couldn’t force the disciples he was training to follow away from what they had always known.  They had to make a conscious decision to value what they were learning and becoming in Jesus over the comfort of the traditions they held.  This means they had to choose to follow Paul to the lecture hall of Tyrannus.  For many of Paul’s disciples, this lecture hall was a foreign place.  It would be an uncomfortable place to learn about God and Jesus. However, they would come to find out that in the two years following, they would grow because of their decision.

In the two years after Paul left the synagogue. Where Paul decided to focus on the goals that God had given him, the disciples he was teaching decided to follow God over following their comfort. The word says that everyone in the area heard about who Jesus is, both Jews and Greeks. Paul and his disciples got to see the word of God in action because they chose to follow instead of becoming obstinate.  They chose to surrender what they valued to gain that which was better, being disciples of Jesus.

 The question I have for you is, what do you need to surrender potentially to get to the point God is calling you to?  As Christians, it makes sense that we cannot partake in activities or things that are antithetical or opposite to the Christian life. However, we also have to realize that sometimes good is the greatest enemy of great.  Paul could have chosen to try and stay at the synagogue and likely could’ve kept teaching. However, because of the resistance, he would have been impeded from discipling and evangelizing and never seen the success he achieved as recorded in Acts. Paul’s disciples could’ve tried to stay connected with the synagogue, but what kind of stumbling would’ve happened in their life and in their learning that would’ve impeded their becoming disciples of Jesus?We can wonder what these people’s lives would’ve been like if they had tried to keep their feet in two worlds. We could wonder what Paul’s life would’ve been like if he had tried to fight a war on two fronts.  The truth is, we will never know. What we can see is that by choosing to surrender to the main goals God called them to, they saw success.  My suggestion is that we do the same. Choose to surrender the weights that we do not need to carry and run full force after the goal God is calling us to.  It will mean giving up things we potentially enjoy, good things. However, we will gather the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ, and the life he calls us to.