EUROCLYDON

"When the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their desire, putting out to sea, they sailed close by Crete. But not long after, a tempestuous head wind arose, called Euroclydon." Acts 27:13-14

It began a difficult journey: a ship bound for Rome, and the apostle Paul bound in chains. Paul had been apprehended for preaching God's word. Paul's scripture-based preaching infuriated the Pharisees and Sadducees, two sects which denied the resurrection of Jesus. Fearful of their loss in power, as Paul's preaching was converting many away from their doctrine, they sought to capture and kill Paul. They accused him of sedition (noun. conduct or speech inciting or causing people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch). 

Paul's Roman citizenship meant that his captors had to hold his trial in Rome (Acts 25:10-11). Not only did this preserve Paul's life, his supposed crimes might have gotten him killed in Jerusalem, but would not qualify for death in Rome, but it also fit neatly into God's plan. God had previously informed him that He intended Paul to be in Rome: "the Lord stood by him and said, 'Be of good cheer, Paul; for as you have testified for Me in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness at Rome'" (Acts 23:11).

And so they set out for Rome, but the waters were tumultuous and dangerous. It was immediately apparent to Paul that the voyage would result in disaster: the loss of the cargo and possibly the lives of those on the ship. But the centurion (commander) decided to take the advice of the helmsman rather than that of Paul.

They sailed right into the Euroclydon winds, a cyclical, tempestuous wind. Control of the ship was lost as it tossed in the sea; the crew did all they could to keep it afloat. Days passed of the fight to stay alive. Storm clouds blocked the sun and stars and stifled the hope of the men on the ship. As the winds and waters continued to beat down on them and their ship, no longer did they believe they would survive.

Meanwhile, Paul appealed to God through abstinence. If the journey was to be survived, Paul knew that it would be by the Hand of God. Paul's fast allowed him to review the situation, reflect on the decisions made that led to it, and hear with clarity God's plan of restoration out from it. From here, the journey documented in scripture helps us to survive the Euroclydon winds in our own lives.

• NEITHER SUN NOR STARS

Hopelessness and defeat are perhaps the most able to extinguish a person's faith. Sometimes the darkness of the storms in our lives are so comprehensive that we lose sight and even remembrance of the light. The crew on the ship were not like Paul. They followed the advice of men rather than the plan of God. Their rejection of God's plan may have been inadvertent but the result was the same. 

Sometimes our desire to do something or for something to be done is so fierce that we ignore common sense in favor of impatience. Like the men on the ship, we have it in our minds that we must be certain places at certain times. Things to do. People to meet. Money to make. Prospects to take. We want all of it to occur on a timely schedule, a schedule in accordance with our impatience rather than God's plan.

Paul presented the men on the ship with a choice: wait and have a smooth voyage, go and possibly lose your life to a difficult one. They chose difficult, and so often do we. But that sort of thinking propels us directly into cyclical winds too. We go around and around making the same mistakes, beating back the same fierce seas, desperate to stay afloat until we finally lose the hope that its even possible anymore.

The absence of sun and stars made it impossible for the crew to navigate the ship. They were tossed, lost and without hope. Which is a place many of us find ourselves to be in at times. Distress causes us to lose all ability to navigate the sometimes-rough waters of circumstance and emotion. Feelings of rejection, hopelessness, isolation, fear, anger, and impatience cause to behave erratically. That erratic behavior directly contradicts God's promises to us:

Rather than rejected we are chosen by Him, Ephesians 1:4. There is no such thing as hopelessness for a child of God, within the kingdom of God, hope is in constant supply, Malachi 3:10. We cannot be isolated from the presence or promise of God, Matthew 28:20. 

That erratic behavior directly contradicts God's instruction given to us: 

Do not fear, John 14:27. Do not be angry, Ephesians 4:26-27. Wait on the Lord, Psalm 27:14.

Extraordinarily, God has provided the emotional and practical instructions on how to survive the storm. Sometimes, in order to actually apply them to our behavior, we need to lighten the ship.

• LIGHTENING THE SHIP

Paul knew what to do in that darkness. Paul knew that he would make it to Rome because God had told him he would. Paul's advice and prayer and fasting was for the purpose of the preservation of the people with him. They were sinking. What do we do when we are sinking? We toss out the things that are causing us to sink. We remove from our ship, life, the things causing the water to weight us down. Paul did this through a fast. Sometimes a fast is about food, but other times a fast is the jettison of distractions. Secular distractions: attitudes, activities and other things that have no religious or spiritual basis. 

The world is full of secular distractions. The attainment of power and celebrity are cultivated by cultures around the world. The desire for control and admiration distracts us from giving and humility. The abundance and attainability of material wealth induces a desperate want of things. Our value of the material causes us to undervalue the actual substance of life. We corrupt the even the biosphere we rely on to exist in order to make and buy and have and use things. We neglect others' basic human rights and needs to pursue our own agendas, secure our own borders, protect our own reputation, clear our own day, have our own fun, claim our own rights and needs.

And so sometimes we need to jettison the things that perpetuate in our lives the distractions of our culture: the social media and music, biased news sources, commercialism and celebrity. We need to clear our lives of the distractions which cause the cloud coverage that blocks the sun and stars. The hope and the lighthouse that is God. We need to learn to be more aware of our susceptibility to the things our world says we should want. 

God is able to strengthen us. His love and instruction render us less vulnerable to the desperate desire of filling our bodies, souls and lives with those corrosive distractions. We need to clear the space, we need to jettison those things.

• TO TAKE NOURISHMENT

And then we need to be filled in. Once we have thrown overboard the distractions, we need to fill ourselves with something ordered and solid. We need meat and bread, that is: the deep and thorough word of God. Paul encouraged the crew to eat: "Therefore I urge you to take nourishment, for this is for your survival..." Indeed this is for your survival. God urges us to stop ingesting empty calories. To stop taking in the secular world as though it could ever possible sustain us. 

Our souls need actual, spiritual nourishment. Things and fame and vanity are empty. The fruit of impatience is unsatisfactory and insufficient. Like Paul, fast the distractions and then take the bread. Live with gratitude for the One who pointed out the problem and then solved it. 

Paul cautioned that only those who remained on the ship would survive. The people who decided to solve their problems on their own would fail. God has capabilities that we do not; the impossible for us is possible for Him, Luke 18:27. The meaning of this is that we cannot leave  the kingdom of God and expect to thrive or even survive. It is God's path that leads to life and safety and blessing. We cannot just abandon ship (pun definitely intended) and expect to be nourished. All along God's path are the fruit and meat that nourish us. Away from from God's path, we might sustain ourselves but God has bigger plans than for us to be merely sustained. He has plans for us to live, thrive and survive. 

We must throw the junk out and fill ourselves with love and patience, humility and compassion. Easy as it is to give in to our cravings and binge on our temptations, we have to train, spiritually, until we are stronger than that impulse. The impulse to let loose our anger, feed our desire, act on our impatience. It is the nourishment that God provides which grows within us the muscle subdue the things, people and emotions that have power over us. 

God will get you to where you need to be. The storms become irrelevant when you choose God as your helmsman, the One to navigate your ship. Your life. You may not, at times, see the sun or stars. You may feel hopeless, but you must remember that God is the light. God provides the hope. Jettison the distractions and the clouds with dissipate, the sun and stars will be visible once again.

Dear Philemon

The succinct book of Philemon is an analogy of how Jesus put your freedom on His tab.

You are Onesimus.

Onesimus was a man enslaved to someone named Philemon. The apostle Paul met Onesimus while he was imprisoned for preaching the Gospel. Whenever Paul was imprisoned, he utilized his situation as an opportunity to preach the Gospel. Because of Paul, the Word of God received entry to otherwise unreachable places.

And so Paul spoke with his fellow prisoners, and even succeeded in converting some of them. Onesimus was one such man. Steadily, Paul and Onesimus built a friendship. It became clear to Paul that despite his imperfection, Onesimus had greater purpose than enslavement. But Onesimus could not afford his own freedom.

Paul wrote a letter to Philemon, on Onesimus' behalf; in it, he acknowledged that Onesimus owed Philemon but could not pay his debt. As a solution to that, Paul absorbed Onesimus' debt. He told Philemon to put the debt on his tab. And just like that, Onesimus was absolved. You see, Paul was in a position where he could afford the debt and he had clout with the man to whom the debt was owed. To Paul, the new debt was worth paying because Onesimus was worthy of freedom.


The reason why you are Onesimus is because your imperfection has caused a debt. A debt you owe but cannot pay: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23. But Jesus is in a position where he can afford to absorb your debt; and Jesus has clout with God. Jesus believes that you are worthy of freedom. The succinct book of Philemon is an analogy of how Jesus put your freedom on His tab.


Out of love, Jesus pleads to the Father on your behalf. Without intercession from the heart of Jesus, who else is worthy to vouch for you to the Father? Except for Paul, Onesimus had no one who could orchestrate his freedom or vouch for his worthiness of freedom. Like him, there is no one to do that for us except for The One. The One: Jesus, who came and modeled God's will perfectly on the Earth.


Paul had a deep friendship with Philemon. He put in the work. Philemon knew Paul to be an honorable and hardworking man. Therefore, Paul's opinion had weight and influence with Philemon. Jesus' opinion of you has weight and influence with God. Jesus has elected to be your representative, he has vouched for your soul and character. Why? Because he loves you, and trusts you to do good, to be righteous, with the freedom you are given. The same reason Paul vouched for Onesimus.


God has placed enormous value on what Jesus loves. And what Jesus loves, He trains. Paul had firmly rooted his life in scripture, and allowed it to train his soul. The word of God completely transformed him (from persecutor of Christians to a proponent of them). He passed that re-prioritization on to Onesimus. Similarly, our relationship with Jesus is an enriched teacher-student dynamic, instruction on how to align our lives in accordance with what is righteous.


Jesus loves us enough to rub the dirt off. He polishes us off before the Father, proving that underneath the dirt is a soul worthy of eternal life. Without Jesus' love for our imperfect souls, freedom would have flown indifferently right over us.


Your relationship with God transforms you from slave of the world to sibling of Jesus. Repentance does not provide the coin you need to purchase forgiveness, repentance makes you eligible for God's charitable magnanimity.


Essentially, scripture speaks one thing to us: If you want to be a part of the Kingdom, you'll need to know how it operates in order to function within its realm. After all, life cannot survive in an environment it was not designed for. In Matthew 12:49, Jesus declared that His family members were the students of God's word. He wanted us to understand that to be adopted into the Kingdom, a person had to submit to being designed for it.


The system of the world is entirely different from the system of heaven. And for that reason, we have to retrain our brain if we ever hope to make the transition. In the world, we are slaves. We are slaves to fear; to vanity; to desire; to emotion; to the laws of science. Jesus teaches us how to break those chains:


He teaches us how to dismantle fear and therefore render it powerless. He teaches us the wealth of selflessness over the poverty of selfishness. He teaches us that temptation in the world is the most persuasive slaver, and that to escape it, we have to put a willing spirit into authority over our weak flesh. He teaches us how to choose the advantageous emotions over the harmful ones.


The re-prioritization of a lifestyle is a form of lifelong, thorough, spiritual coursework. We work on the earth to prepare ourselves for the life after this one by making this life better for others. You become eligible for a place in the family of God's kingdom by learning to operate within it and thus fit in it.


Though you might feel useless to the world, you are useful to the Kingdom of God. You will be compressed by the world until you learn to occupy the space the Spirit has given you to expand.


Onesimus, and Paul for that matter, would have been forever pressed down to slaves and corrupt mentalities had they not learned to expand in spirit. Jesus has given each of us a wide breadth and deep basin in which to make an impact while we are on earth. Utilize that space of potential spiritual energy. Grow into it.


The systems and products of the world are useless. If you serve it, so are you. But you don't have to be, you have not been irrevocably sentenced to that slavery. You are not a slave to sin within or around you once the power of Jesus had declared you free. Jesus has extended an invitation into a space of freedom, you need only to step into it. He has provided the directions.


Picture the restrictive posture of a slave. They can only make certain movements. The humble and poor and overlooked and damaged and failed people of the world seem also to have only restrictive movements. But Jesus says: we can do big things with what makes you small in the world. So windmill your arms, do a cartwheel. Figuratively, speaking. Because you are not in chains.


Onesimus was confined by prison walls. But after Paul vouched for him, the whole earth was open to him. Maybe you are confined by something: a relationship, an insecurity, a fear, a doubt, weakness, an addiction, a depression, or loss. Allow Jesus to break those chains in a moment-to-moment relationship with you throughout your life. You are not confined so long as you are free in Him.


In the introduction of the book of Philemon, the author: Paul, introduces himself as a "prisoner of Jesus Christ." The complete irony is that Jesus purchases our contract from our former slaver. But as Jesus' prisoner, we experience freedom. His claim on our lives prevents anyone or anything else from ever owning us.
Onesimus went on to travel and preach with Paul; he became the valued member of the kingdom Paul always knew he would. What Jesus sees in you is real and will be realized as soon as you step into freedom.