All I Want

Readings:
II Chronicles 11
Acts 20:19-38

Focus:
Acts 20:24: "For myself, I set no store by life; all I want is to finish the race, and complete the task which the Lord Jesus assigned to me, that of bearing my testimony to the gospel of God's grace."

As Paul is saying goodbye to the Christians at Ephesus, he tells them that he has a strong sense from the Holy Spirit that he is heading toward imprisonment and hardship. Yet, knowing this, he still goes, for this is the direction that he feels God is telling him to go.

Paul is able to do this confidently because he has his priorities right. He does not put his own wishes and desires ahead of God's; he puts God's first. But perhaps a better way to put this would be to say that Paul loves God so much, that God's will has become what Paul wants more than anything else. God's will is not something that Paul has to struggle against; he does not have to valiantly subdue his own will in order to do God's will. Paul truly wants to do what God wants for him, more than Paul wants to do anything else.

Those of us who love God are all at different stages in our journey toward becoming like Paul. Some of us are still struggling to want what God wants. It is good for us to have Paul as a model. I want to be like that; I want to want what God wants.