Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. Acts 14:19
God has many ways to deter us from sin. One is to provide reminders for us so that we never take disobedience to Him lightly. Before his conversion, Paul assumed that he was righteous before God. In reality, Paul was so disoriented to God that he arrested and executed Christians in order to please Him! Paul was so blinded to God’s will that when he watched Stephen being brutally murdered for his faith, Paul’s heart was hardened, and he became even more determined to imprison other Christians.
It is significant that there are two occurrences of stoning mentioned in the New Testament?Stephen’s and Paul’s. Was it coincidence that God allowed Paul to be stoned in the same manner as Stephen had been? God had certainly forgiven Paul for his involvement in Stephen’s death, but God also left him with a reminder of what his arrogance had led him to do. If pride could blind Paul to God once, pride could do it again. Perhaps Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was a direct result of this stoning. It may have served as a visible reminder to Paul, and to others, of the terrible consequences of sin.
God is absolutely just. He loves, and He forgives, but He does not compromise His righteousness. God deals with us uniquely. He draws upon our experiences to teach us about Himself. God will forgive us of our sin, but He may provide stark reminders of the ugliness of sin. Let us thank God that He loves us enough to remind us of the destructive consequences of sin in our lives.
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Dear brothers and sisters,
Greetings! I would like to tell you that people living in different time zones may like to read the devotion on the their own date. I wonder how I could read the devotion on my current date instead of the one yesterday.
God bless
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Hi,
Unfortunately we’re not able to deliver the devotional based on time zone. We’re sorry!
-The BMI Team-
Yes, but as I have suggest twice via email, if you were to introduce a calendar tool (much like at utmost.org), then we could read whichever devotion we wanted. I commend their site design to you. Thanks!
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Aloha BMI Team
Question: Is there a way to save a particular Devotional so I can revisit it again at a later date?
Mahalo & Blessings
🙏🏻
Jack
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Jack, I’m not part of the BMI team, but I can say that there is no way to select a devotional by date—per my comment above from two years ago, a source of continual frustration. The only way to “save” a devotional is to make a note of the URL, which echos the name of the devotional, e.g., for today’s “Painful Reminders” the URL would be:
http://blackaby.org/painful-reminders/
I hope that helps.
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Hey Jack, unfortunately we don’t have a way for you to select by date, as John mention. However, if you know the title of the devotional you can always search the title via the search bar on the website.
Hope that helps.
-The BMI Team
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Hi. When there is a devotional I particularly like I take a screen shot (I read on my IPad). It is then in my photos where I can organize in an album. I can also email them to others from my photos or to myself if I want to print out. Just an ideas if your device has screen shot capability.
