Make a Choice

Welcome to all my new readers!  I hope the Lord blesses all of you (new and old readers alike) and that you will leave me a comment if the spirit hits you.

Today, I was getting ready for VBS next week.  The lesson I am teaching is on the truth.  It's about Paul.  So I went to Acts.  Acts has Paul's conversion, his missionary trips, his visions, a lot of his Christian life.  I stopped at Acts 17.  This chapter talks about Paul being at Thessalonica and Berea and being chased by the Jews.  That brings him to Athens, where the Lord has him talk about the idols that are all over that city.

Acts 17:16-21
Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present.
And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, "What would this idle babbler wish to say?" Others, "He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,"--because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming?
"For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean."
Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) 

Paul was talking to the philosophers, trying to reason with them.  I'll be they had an answer for every point he raise.  But he finally talked enough that they were willing to try and understand, or at least listen.  Maybe they thought that if he would get his say, then he would leave.  They thought the gospel was strange. 
I can't fathom that the gospel is strange.  But I know to peoples around the world it is.  Those that have never been reached can not know how much God loves them.  I think they do know that there is something "out there" because they seem to have their own reasoning and gods.  Even if you have never been exposed to the gospel of Christ, God has set their hearts open and they have to wage the war within themselves on whether they accept it or not. 

But that is not just with the untouched.  We, who have been exposed to church all our lives, still have to make that conscious acknowledgment whether to follow Christ or not.  So will you listen to Paul?  Will you listen to the world?  I hope you have already made your claim and are my brother or sister.