"The Persuasive Power Of The Word"

There is also a solemn and urgent warning for us, believers. The Spirit speaks to us when we hear the Word preached or read it in our study. Every time we are confronted with God’s truth in reference to our lives and our walk and our witness and give it the Scarlet O’Hara ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow’ response, we harden ourselves against Him, and that is disobedience.

Listen to Andrew Murray:

“There is nothing so hardening as delay. When God speaks to us, He asks for a tender heart, open to the whispers of His voice of love. The believer who answers the ‘today’ of the Holy Ghost with the ‘tomorrow’ of some more convenient season, knows not how he is hardening his heart; the delay, instead of making the surrender and obedience and faith easy, makes it more difficult. It closes the heart for ‘today’ against the Comforter, and cuts off all hope and power of growth.” “The Holiest of All” – Andrew Murray, Revell, NJ

Christians, when we know of someone, some brother or sister, who is living in disobedience, away from the fellowship and neglecting their spiritual exercise for the lures of the world, we mustn’t excuse them with false assurances that ‘they’ll come around’; ‘give them time’; ‘don’t pressure them or we might push them away’. They are, day by day, hardening themselves, and the time will come when the warnings in their heart will cease, there will be no strength to be found for obedience, the feeling will be gone.

Remember the Eagle’s song, ‘Desperado’?

“Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?

The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine,

It’s hard to tell the nighttime from the day.

You’re losin’ all your highs and lows;

Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?”

You tell them! You challenge them! If you love them, you point out to them how everything is turning into shades of gray and they are slowly sinking into the bog of deception, thinking they are alright but gradually and dangerously losing their ability to pull themselves out.

Just like the Eagle’s song, they have to be warned to stop straddling their fence before it’s too late. Because, believer, they, (you? me?) when God’s voice is ignored again and again, do not become softer, but only harder. And none of us knows when what God calls ‘today’ will be over.

The peril of persistent procrastination.

Well, let’s talk about:

THE BLESSING OF BOLD BELIEVING

Class gets kind of rowdy, so Paul takes his serious students, the ones who aren’t afraid to admit they’ve been wrong and are teachable and willing to be used by God, and removes them to a place more conducive to learning.

In fact, it’s a school. Now we don’t know anything at all about this guy, Tyrannus. His name means ‘the tyrant’, so quite possibly he was the teacher and overseer of this school and earned the nickname from his students.

If not, he just drew a very unfortunate name from his parents.

In any case, commentators say that it was the custom of the culture to take a break from work and studies from about 11 am to mid afternoon because of the heat of the day. So the common speculation is that Paul used those hours when this facility was not in use to meet there with his students and continue to teach.