I wear thick glasses and read dusty books! Thick glasses because I have 20/400 eyesight and read dusty books cuz I’m a history buff. (All the good history books were written before the turn of the century (20th not 21st) and are dusty). If you were to come over to my house on any given evening you might find me perusing through one of the hundreds of old books we have in boxes, on shelves, under lamps (to make the lamp look bigger) and on the coffee tables. On the surface I would look like quite the intellectual but in reality…well…. not so much.
…… BUT IF I WERE, YOU WOULD FIND ME SHARING MY FAITH LIKE PAUL did in ACTS 17:22-34.
Acts 17:22-34
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Paul addresses the men at the Areopagus. (Council or Court, which for a time met on a low hill near the Acropolis.) As Paul stood there the men could look past Paul to the City of Athens and see the idols that represented the gods that Paul knew were worthless.
Essentially these were a group of philosophers and academics who met to debate this theory or that theory. This would have been a place where Peter and his confrontation, would have gotten his “repent and be baptized” (see yesterday’s devo) thrown back in his face. But where a man like Paul, whom God put together, was well received. Or at least much better received than Peter.
Great example of this is Ravi Zacharias who travels all over the world speaking in academic institutions like Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Texas Tech! (All of the great centers of higher learning 🙂 ) See his website here: http//: www.rzim.org
Intellectual person is typically Inquisitive, Analytical and Logical. If that describes you then you may want to share your faith like Paul did in the above passage……. intellectually.
JUST DO IT, LIKE YOU DO IT!
I N T E N T I O N A L Marriage 