Success Story, a devotional thought

The very last sentence in the book of Acts—after all the intrigue and danger, toil and tears, adventures and brushes with death—is that while under house arrest, Paul “proclaimed the Kingdom of God with all boldness and without hindrance!” Some commentators note that Acts seems to end somewhat abruptly, but for my money, this sentence: “He proclaimed the Kingdom of God with boldness and without hindrance” is about as fitting a conclusion to Acts as I could imagine. After all, isn’t this what Jesus promised would happen way, way back in Chapter 1: that his Spirit-filled disciples would become his witnesses “to the ends of the earth”? And isn’t Paul’s preaching in Rome, at the very epicenter of the known world, a direct, if somewhat unexpected, fulfillment of that promise?

I call it unexpected because from a strictly worldly perspective, everything has seemingly fallen apart for Paul: the Romans have him under house arrest, he’s been waiting two years for his case to be heard by Caesar, the Jewish leaders have rejected him, and God only knows what’s next to come. And yet, measured by God’s measuring stick, two years of free, uninhibited telling-others-about-Jesus (to heck with house-arrest and forthcoming trials) is a major score for the Gospel. It gets me thinking about earthly measures of success versus God’s measures of success. If I could reach the end of my journey and say, “I got to tell others about Jesus, boldly and without hindrance,” then regardless my circumstances or my worldly achievements, by God’s standards that’s a life shot through with success.