Persuade
Sometimes I get a word and it just won't let go, so I head to the dictionary and to Biblegateway and start searching for what God might be trying to tell me. He had me chuckling with the last Message passage! Blockheads!
The dictionary defined persuade as "causing someone to believe something, especially after a sustained effort."
We have had to do a lot of persuading the past two weeks, with our loved ones, to help them agree to the medical care they have needed. When we are faced with situations needing persuasion, we need the Holy Spirit in full operation.
Paul had a ministry of persuasion! Dig in!
When Barnabas and Paul finally realized what was going on, they stopped them. Waving their arms, they interrupted the parade, calling out, "What do you think you're doing! We're not gods! We are men just like you, and we're here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God himself, the living God. We don't make God; he makes us, and all of this-sky, earth, sea, and everything in them. Acts 14:14-15
When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was able to give all his time to preaching and teaching, doing everything he could to persuade the Jews that Jesus was in fact God's Messiah. But not such luck. All they did was argue contentiously and contradict him at every turn. Totally exasperated, Paul had finally had it with them and gave it up as a bad job. "Have it your way, then," he said. "You've made your bed; now lie in it. From now on I'm spending my time with other nations." Acts 18:5-6
They agreed on a time. When the day arrived, they came back to his home with a number of their friends. Paul talked to them all day, from morning to evening, explaining everything involved in the kingdom of God, and trying to persuade them all about Jesus by point in out what Moses and the prophets had written about him. Acts 28:23
Some of them were persuaded by what he said, but others refused to believe a word of it. When the unbelievers got cantankerous and started bickering with each other, Paul interrupted: "I have just one more thing to say to you. The Holy Spirit sure new what he was talking about when he addressed our ancestors through Isaiah the prophet: Go to this people and tell them this: "You're going to listen with your eyes, bur you won't see a thing. These people are blockheads! They stick their fingers in their ears so they won't have to listen; They screw their eyes shut so they won't have to look, so they won't have to deal with me face-to-face and let me heal them." Acts 28:24-27
