Flip the Script

Life is filled with destruction, deception, and death. What are our options to help us deal with life when the blows come? Sometimes we create a theology that dismisses suffering from our lives. Other times, we try to insulate ourselves through money, houses, and substances. However, a better plan is to create a purpose for our life that would dwarf anything and everything that comes against us. If your purpose is too small, you'll be crushed.

In Acts, we see an invitation into the most overwhelming and overriding purpose of all. When we truly see the Messiah for who He is, we will be all in on letting people know about Him and living lives that bring Him glory. That's our compelling purpose.

Life is going to hand you a script. The beautiful power you have is you don't have to accept or acquiesce to the script. You actually flip the script because your purpose can't be stopped by any circumstance that life brings.

There's nothing more powerful than having a prevailing purpose that trumps all circumstances. The Holy Spirit is alive, not so we can be weird or just sit back and sing Kumbaya. He is powerful. We need a supernatural source in us to do and be what we cannot do and be on our own.

In Acts 2:22-23, we get the script. Jesus came to earth to care about the poor, to help the marginalized, and to use miracle power to heal. He taught truth and sought justice. He was an amazing leader, and the script was the He would be turned over to the authorities, beaten, and abandoned on a cross in the open to die in the sun.

This was the script, but Jesus had a prevailing purpose to come to earth to glorify His Father by making the way for everyone to come from death to life in Himself. He was going to do that no matter what. Jesus flipped the script. There is a Sovereign God on the planet, and He does not crumble under the circumstances of a broken world. Acts 2:24 gives us the flip. Jesus died, but God raised Him from the dead. Peter continues preaching, but in Acts 2:36, he makes it clear that Jesus is Lord and Messiah. The point? God flips the script of death and writes a story of life.

In Acts 7, we see Stephen emboldened as he preaches the gospel. Again, this upsets the religious leaders, so they falsely accuse him of teaching heresy about Moses. They made a plan to take his life. In Acts 7:55, it says that Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit, and he held onto his prevailing purpose. He looked up and saw Jesus, who normally was sitting at the right hand of God, standing. It is possible to live your life in such a way that it causes Jesus to stand in the moment of your greatest pressure and persecution. The leaders rushed to stone him. Taking what he had learned from Jesus, he asked God to forgive them. The religious leaders gave their coats to a young man named Saul, who was approving of Stephen's death. The believers didn't immediately dismiss what had happened and default to "God will flip the script!" They had to bury Stephen and mourn. They still had to deal with the sadness and grief of humanity, they just sandwiched it in between the powerful mission of God and the work of the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 8, Paul continues to persecute the Church, but those who had been scattered continued to preach wherever they went. The message is that you can execute the messenger, but you can't stop the power of the gospel.

Later in Acts 9, the same Saul, who was giving permission for Stephen's life to end, found a way to go out and threaten Christians outside of Jerusalem. On his way, Paul is blinded in a vision of Jesus. He was recovering at home in Damascus, waiting on the man God told him would come. Ananias, a follower of Jesus, was told to go to Saul and restore his sight. He did not want to go knowing that it could get him killed, but he was obedient to what God asked him to do. God had already picked Saul to be the one to take the gospel to the Gentiles. While Stephen went straight to Jesus, Saul went straight to Damascus to round up Christians, but God stopped everything and flipped the script. Saul would become the biggest proponent of what he was trying to wipe out.

Are you living with small purpose? Are you letting shut doors determine your life, or are you being faithful to what God has called you to? Be the light on the hill and be a part of bringing others to Jesus wherever you are and in whatever you do. Paul spent the last years of his life chained to a guard, but he didn't complain; he just shared the gospel.

Your circumstances can be a funnel that all the weight comes through to crush you, or it can be the megaphone that you can use to tell people that Jesus is alive.