So when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, “The will of the Lord be done.”
The Apostle Paul would not be persuaded to follow the will of the Lord. Christians read this and view the Apostle Paul as the one person who knows all things and was obedient to the Lord in all things. Looking at it from my perspective, Paul thought everyone else was wrong, including the Holy Spirit.
Really what we are reading is what many Christians are doing today, following their own will and justifying their decision as it being God’s will. I’ve seen people waste their lives waiting on a false belief that they were doing God’s will. Paul was clearly forewarned concerning the danger, likewise he was warned not to go. Paul was suffering from a thing called pride.
In the previous verse 21:4 “They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem.” However, fortunately for us the Holy Spirit works for us through our mistakes. While imprisoned by his own choice Paul wrote four books of the New Testament, Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon. Hypothetically let’s juxtapose another possible scenario:
Paul is obedient to the warning and during the four years he visits the churches, and he further increases the congregations and the new regions the Holy Spirit would have sent him to. And during his free time, he writes even more letters to the churches. I don’t know, but I know Paul stepped out of God’s perfect will into His permissive will. Until we get to heaven, we won’t know the trillions of scenarios that could have come forth. New regions getting saved, next generation Christians, could have made the impact, Gen. 5 may have avoided the plague of Islam.
We can get entrenched in our faith even when we are wrong. I am guilty of holding onto false promises, for far too long. Usually it worked out to my shame. Proverbs 19:20-21, “Here counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise and thy latter end. There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the council of the Lord, that shall stand.”
Paul refused counsel and he sat in ‘time out for a while,’ I noticed that his letters became softer and filled with more love than previously before. Paul wrote the epistles, but the epistles wrote Paul.
