Teaching Series
Advancing
Monday—Culture Makers: The Commoners

Series: Advancing
Message: Culture Makers: The Commoners
Preacher: Japhet De Oliveira
Reflection: Nathan Brown
Live Wonder: Zan Long
Live Adventure: Zan Long
Live Purpose: Jessyka Albert
Editor: Becky De Oliveira

Refresh: Begin with prayer. Ask for the Holy Spirit to open your heart to new understanding and for God’s character to be revealed.

Read: Acts 18:1–17 in the New Living Translation (NLT). Note 1–3 insights or questions. 

Reflect: As a book editor, a recurring part of my job is answering inquiries and questions from would-be writers who want to know how to write a book or, more pressingly, how to get their brilliant idea published. I try to be honest and thus am probably sometimes not thought of as encouraging. 

For someone who has not written or published anything before coming to me with these kinds of questions, I am likely to suggest that they should look at their book as a 10-year process, during which time they would not only be writing, editing, and re-writing the book itself, but would also be working on other writing projects, trying to get published in a variety of ways, and focusing on the ongoing work of learning how to write. This “wisdom” is based on my own experience as a would-be writer and, of course, there are exceptions to the rule—but doing something well most often takes time and work.

It has been said—many times—that genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration. It’s a rebuttal of the notion that genius is something that someone simply has or that it is only about isolated moments of insight and invention. Rather, a large proportion of the success of most “geniuses” comes through hard work, everyday habits, and stubborn persistence; indeed, it is often the “perspiration” that makes the inspiration possible.

This is the pattern we see in this story of the ministry of Paul. Consider the range of experience demonstrated in these verses. He was working to support himself by making tents. His preaching was “opposed and reviled” (verse 6) to the point that he had to leave the synagogue. He saw some success, but obviously still needed encouragement—and then he had a vision of God speaking directly to him! 

Paul’s ministry probably consisted of more than 1 percent inspiration. In his letters, he regularly referred back to his Damascus Road experience and there are quite a few stories of miracles and visions. Nonetheless, there was also much hard work, everyday ordinariness, and long-term perseverance. 

Or to put it another way: for Paul, Jesus was his 100 percent, but Paul also brought his own 100 percent. This was often difficult and demanding, but also mundane and everyday. And, as we see in his letters, Paul always kept his long-term project in mind.

Recalibrate: How do you feel about the difficult and mundane elements of your life of faith?

Respond: Pray, giving thanks for your life with its joys and challenges—as difficult as such a prayer might be.

Research: What can you discover about how to achieve a large and long-term goal in your life?

Nathan Brown is a writer and editor at Signs Publishing in Warburton, Victoria, Australia. He has written numerous books; his most recent is Engage: Faith that Matters.

 

Take a bottle of bubble mixture outside with your child and blow bubbles, watching as they fly away or popping them before they hit the ground. Know that God watches over us wherever we go.

Notice how you breath when you are sitting still for one minute. Now do something really active for one minute and see what your breath is doing. Are you puffing? Practice getting your heart to beat fast every day. In the quiet times, ask Jesus to let your heart beat for Him.

Do you work more on the side of perspiration or inspiration? Do you sometimes find it hard to have an slow Daily Walk with Jesus? Why do you think it is that people always crave the big events over the small day-to-day moments?

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