pramsay posted on February 02, 2006 02:26
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To some it seemed like such a waste. Others looked on with amazement. They could see the towering blaze and smell the smoke - a group of people were having a huge bonfire. Mental calculators were clicking as people closely watched the bonfire grow. Another former magician arrives with his box of books and throws his favored belongings one by one into the fire. Witches and psychics arrive and add some more fuel to the fire. Finally someone estimates that the books and materials burned in the Ephesus Bonfire were worth 50,000 pieces of silver. CNN or Fox News weren't around back then, but you can imagine the headlines the next day! Former Witches, Magicians, Necromancers and Psychics Abandon Their Trade and Embrace Jesus Christ.
"And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." (Act 19:18-20)
It's one thing for me to say that I am a christian or that I love the Lord. But the real proof to those who know me is the change in my life. These people in Ephesus made their living off their magic tricks and dark, demonic practises. Many of them had become wealthy through their involvement with the occult. But now Christ has changed their lives. A radical transformation. A 180 degree turn in their lives. New desires. New principles. New behaviour. Publicly they demonstrated that at any cost they were abandoning their past - even if it meant a loss worth 50,000 pieces of silver. Profit was no longer their bottom line. Christ now was the center of their lives. Pleasing Him was their daily driving force. Their new bottom line was: does this honor Christ or please HIM? if not, burn it. Get it out of our lives.
Can you think of anything in your life that you need to throw into a bonfire? These new christians in Ephesus were not even willing to discard their past by selling it. They didn't want anyone else to be contaminated by the things they once enjoyed in their sins. But someone argues - "You don't understand how much a part of my life that music was or those movies were or those tarot cards were. They were almost an obsession with me before I was saved. So I find it really hard to chuck those things out of my life. I think I'll just hang unto them for sentimental reasons and once in a while it probably doesn't do me much harm to revisit my past."
The single greatest contribution I can make to the spread of the Gospel is to abandon completely my sins and pleasures and habits of the past and to focus on doing only those things that please Christ and that magnify His Name.
Can you think of anything in your life you should throw into a bonfire?