“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.” (Acts 24:24, ESV)
The Apostle Paul would have understood the drive for success that motivated Felix and Drusilla. He too, had this focus at one time. He had studied and worked hard to rise in the ranks of Judaism as a Pharisee of Pharisees. He had the passion and the smarts to go far. But on that road where he encountered the risen Christ, everything changed.
He wrote about this change in his letter to the Philippian church:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7–11, ESV)
Paul’s whole worldview had changed. Jesus was everything to him, and nothing else mattered. He counted it all as rubbish. Now, he stood before a couple that were like he was, looking to gain whatever they could from this world because they believed the philosophy that says that “the one who dies with the most toys wins.”
The problems with this philosophy is that the one who dies, still dies—no matter how many toys he has. And as Jesus said, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36, ESV). What would Paul talk about when he had the ear of this power couple? We don’t have to guess because Luke tells us in v. 24—he spoke about “faith in Christ Jesus.”
You see, the Christian faith is based upon a person, upon Jesus Christ. It isn’t about this earth, or what we can get. Those people who claim to be Christian preachers and teachers who are trying to sell us our best life now don’t get it. Our faith is heavenward, and that is where our focus is. Jesus is in the heavens preparing a place for us, and he is coming again for his Church.
“In our darkest seasons nothing has kept us from desperation but the promise of the Lord: yea, at times nothing has stood between us and self-destruction save faith in the eternal word of God. When worn with pain until the brain has become dazed and the reason well-nigh extinguished, a sweet text has whispered to us its heart-cheering assurance, and our poor struggling mind has reposed upon the bosom of God. That which was our delight in prosperity has been our light in adversity; that which in the day kept us from presuming has in the night kept us from perishing.”
Charles Spurgeon observed, “Because the Lord has bid the universe abide, therefore it stands, and all its laws continue to operate with precision and power. Because the might of God is ever present to maintain them, therefore do all things continue. The word which spake all things into existence has supported them till now, and still supports them both in being and in well-being. God’s ordinance is the reason for the continued existence of creation.”
Always Reforming 