“Let me tell your fortune…”

“Let me tell your fortune…”

The Day that Determines Your Divinely Appointed Destiny

An expansion of “Know that Jesus Can Set You Free” (Truth 1 of 3 in Message 1, “From Prison to Freedom”)

Acts 16:16-18 NIV

¹⁶Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. ¹⁷This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” ¹⁸She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

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Who among you wants to be a loser? Nobody! Who wants to be a winner? Everybody! Everybody wants to be a winner. Everybody wants to be a success. The question is How?

Before I answer that question, let me give you my simple definition for success. For me, as a Christian, success simply means becoming what God wants me to be and doing what God wants me to do. Don’t get me wrong, I am not preaching a certain theology that says, “Believe in Jesus and you will automatically become rich.”  The formula for financial success is more complex than that. I also believe that there are those few whom God calls to a certain kind of life, like the one Mother Theresa and those saints like her lived. So, as far as my definition for success is concerned, a person can take a vow of “poverty” and still become successful.  And, by the way, those who take a vow of poverty aren’t really poor the way we imagined them to be—all their basic needs are provided. Mother Theresa did not live on food stamps! And if poverty is so desirable, why is it that some of those who have taken such vow try to help people get out of it? Mother Theresa actually raised a great sum of money to help the poor! For what she had accomplished, she was successful!

Furthermore, I don’t believe in unnecessary suffering. Why? Obviously because it’s un-necessary! I also don’t think we should encourage laziness and dependency which may be the reason why some people are poor. Heard of “Yo Mama” jokes? Well, here’s one: “Yo mama’s so poor, when she heard about the last supper, she thought she ran out of food stamps.” Food stamps are there help people in need. But they’re not meant to be a permanent source of provision. I think that there are people, especially believers, whose lives can be a lot better if they know how to make money or if they are willing to work for it. But some people, for some reason, are not living to their full potential. Why? Perhaps because they’re not taking advantage of their freedom. Perhaps because they’re lazy. Laziness can be masked by false contentment. Laziness can be a reason for lack of ambition or vision. Or, maybe, people are just in a situation that renders them powerless. And that’s an issue we hope to tackle.

In this series of messages I talked about some biblical principles for success. Instead of moving to the next message, I feel the need to talk more about those principles. So today, please allow me to backtrack and go back to the first principle I shared in the first message (entitled “From Prison to Freedom”) which is, Know that Jesus can set you free. It is important to know that Jesus can set us free, but more important than knowing is actually experiencing freedom in Jesus. I talked about that slave girl who was set free from the malignant spirit of divination that controlled her as well as from her greedy owners that exploited her. Today, let us re-visit the girl’s story. Let us revisit especially that day that may have changed her life for the better forever!

The day she heard the good news

The story in Acts 16 begins on the day the slave girl encountered Paul and his company of evangelists. Evangelists are preachers of the evangel or gospel or good news. I assume that on the day the girl encountered the evangelists was the day she heard the good news.  It’s possible that she may have heard about it before, but that’s just a conjecture. The day that she encountered the evangelists is the day we know for sure she heard the good news. But what was the good news all about?

The good news the evangelists proclaimed and the girl heard was about “the way to be saved.” How do we know that this is the good news she actually heard? We know because the source of information is the girl herself. As she followed Paul and the evangelists she kept shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” Previously, I talked about her not being a good source of this information because she had this spirit that is not of God. But here’s an insight: Despite the fact that an oppressive and manipulative spirit controlled her, she was not at all impenetrable as far as far as the good news was concerned. In other words, even in her enslaved and exploited condition she heard the good news! And, to me, this is very encouraging. For this tells me that no matter how dark the prison a person may be in, the light of the good news of salvation and freedom can shine through and overcome the darkness!

The good news is about “the way to be saved.” It doesn’t say a way. It’s not one of the ways out of many ways. It is simply the way. Such is the exclusivity of the good news that Paul and the evangelists preached.  There is only one way by which we can be saved from Sin and live a new and free life. The way is through Jesus Christ and him alone. There is no other way. In his letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote, “⁵For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men (or people), the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Timothy 2:5-6 ESV). There is only one way to be saved. And that one way is Jesus. We respect those who believe otherwise but according to the Bible God’s way of salvation is only through Christ who gave his life on the cross to save us and to set us free.

This is the good news that the slave girl heard again and again as she continued to follow Paul and the evangelists. This is the same good news that she kept on announcing—no, not just announcing but shouting!—and “kept…up for many days.” You can just imagine the effect of what she had been announcing to those who heard her and especially to her.  To what extent the Gospel sank into her soul, we really don’t know. But as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “…faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (10:17 ESV). So the seed of the gospel may have actually begun to germinate in her heart. Nevertheless, she still was a slave… she still was not free. None of those days was the day that may have determined her divinely appointed destiny. That day was still to come. So now let’s talk about that day.

The day she experienced the good news

The day that may have determined her final destiny was the day when she did not just hear the good news… she experienced it! I say “may have determined” because we don’t know what happened after that day. We don’t know if she took advantage of her freedom. We don’t know if she became the person God wanted her to be. We don’t know if she did what God wanted her to do. What we do know is that through the Apostle Paul she was set free that day! She was set free from the spirit of divination. She was set free from those who exploited her. And because she was set free, she had a clean slate in life… a new beginning!

I don’t know about you but I, too, had a similar experience. I was not possessed by some spirit nor was I exploited by some people but I, too, was a slave to Sin and selfishness. I was religious and often went to church. I even went to a seminary to get trained for priesthood. But I knew that it was hard for me to resist sin. On the outside I may have appeared like a saint but inside I was a sinner. The thought of death scared me because I did not know where I was going if I were to die. But one day in May 1976 Jesus set me free! I read a booklet entitled “How You Can Be Sure You Are a Christian.” I was a teen-ager and lived Mindanao, an island in southern Philippines where there were Muslims. Since I was not a Muslim I thought I was a Christian. But through that booklet I learned that real Christians are those who have received Christ—those who believe in Christ, those who follow Christ and live a Christ-like life.

So on that fateful day, I opened my heart to Jesus Christ and received him as Savior and Lord. And according to the Bible I became a child of God.  John 1:12 says, “…to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God….” As a child of God I became an heir. Heir of what? Heir of eternal life. How do I know for sure I have eternal life? The Bible says, in 1 John 5:12, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” So on that day in May 1976, my journey to success as a Christian began.

Again, for me success means becoming a person God wants me to be and doing what God wants me to do. By becoming a child of God and living life as a child of God is already success. But we should not stop here.  As people who have become children of God and heir of eternal life we have been given a great opportunity to become better persons and accomplish greater things. For Christians, mediocrity should not be the norm. Excellence should be. If the girl who used to be a slave took the opportunity and lived life to the full, she could still have made a lot of money. The difference is that this time she could have made money not for those greedy exploiters but for her and for the people she loved and freely served and by doing God’s will!

A child of God is not one who has already been transported to another world. We may not be of the world but we are still in the world and it is in this world that we begin to live life eternal—“he who has the son has life.” Now what does eternal life look like? Eternal life can be seen in the way we do and accomplish God’s purposes for us. All things being equal, we who believe should be able to succeed as well as those who are successful in life! But even if all things are not equal, we should still be able to not just survive but to be successful. Why? Because in all things, either good or bad, God is working for the good of those who love God (Roman’s 8:28).

I think success should also show in how way we make or raise money to fulfill God’s purposes. Poverty in spirit may be a virtue, but it would be a strange thing to give thanks for poverty. What’s the normal cause for our thanksgiving? God’s abundant blessings! The sad thing is that although God has already set us free, many of us still live like slaves. Many of us are content with working for others or, worse, for exploiters when we can work for God, for ourselves, and for the people we love and love to serve. People blame the economy for their lack. The truth, however, is that despite the economic downturn, opportunities abound here in the United States and, I believe, also elsewhere.  But you need a new set of eyes to see those opportunities that are always there. Yes, they’re there even in times of crisis! But to see them, you need to have the eyes of a believer!

For those of you who work a job, Do you love what you do? Do you find joy in doing your job? Does your job enable you to express who you really are? If your answer is yes, good for you! But if you feel exploited in your job, if you hate your job, why do you keep on doing it? Because it’s the only work available for you? And that if you don’t do it, you wonder how you can survive? You see, surviving is not living. I know it’s neither practical nor smart to just quit your job. But are you doing something today so that one day you can be free and be in a desirable situation? Perhaps you don’t want to leave your job because you feel secure in it. The truth of the matter is that there is really no security in a job. There is always that possibility that you may lose it! So why is it that you’re so committed to such job that perhaps you work even on Sundays, don’t ask for a Sunday off, when you’re supposed to be in church seeking first the kingdom of God so you can claim God’s promise to provide your needs? Or, maybe, you stick to your job because, although “it sucks,” you think that it’s the only way for you to earn a living.

Well, that type of thinking is slave-thinking, not free-thinking. A child of God who is free thinks this way: I am a unique and special person. I am not a slave. I am free. I am a child of God. God has given me the power to be what God wants me to be and the ability to do what God really wants me to do. Now, isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that the way to really live? If you say you have eternal life, then live it! Eternal life is abundant life… a life filled with meaning and joy. As a child of God, your heavenly Father will help you do and accomplish your special mission in the world even if it looks like “mission impossible.” With God you can dream the “impossible dream.” You can go where the average folks would say, No way! Why? Because indeed, as a song goes, “God will make a way where there seems to be no way.” Remember the Wright brothers? Well, people laughed at them but they did not waver in their belief that they could fly. And we who believe can fly!

My question to you now and the bottom line of this message is, Have you been set free so that you can fly? Have you been set free so that you can live your dream? Have you not only heard the good news of salvation but have actually experienced it? Have you received Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord? If your answer is Yes, then good for you. If No, then let this be the Day that would determine your great and divinely appointed destiny. Let this be the Day to let God set you free from Sin and anything else that may enslave you and hinder you from living life to the full. Let today be the Day that you begin living eternal life. How? Receive Jesus, the Christ, the Savior and Lord. Believe in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, you have life…eternal life…abundant life…meaningful life…joyful life! If you believe, you can fly!