A Bad Choice

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

 A BAD CHOICE

Acts 27:13-20

13 When a gentle south wind began to blow, they thought they had obtained what they wanted; so they weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete. 14 Before very long, a wind of hurricane force, called the "northeaster," swept down from the island. 15 The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along. 16 As we passed to the lee of a small island called Cauda, we were hardly able to make the lifeboat secure. 17 When the men had hoisted it aboard, they passed ropes under the ship itself to hold it together. Fearing that they would run aground on the sandbars of Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor and let the ship be driven along. 18 We took such a violent battering from the storm that the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard. 19 On the third day, they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands. 20 When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.

NIV

Sometimes the best laid plans of men are destroyed by forces they have no control over. We are seeing that truth played out for us in this portion of their travels attempting to get to Rome. Even when we think we have everything in place, a nice gentle  south wind and we think we have what we want to get through live in the manner we want, forces can arise which we have no control over and completely change everything, in fact, it might even appear we are not going to survive the crisis. We will see in the next portion of this story that God does intervene and all are saved, but for now we must focus on the concept of these forces that do in fact change the course of our lives. We cannot be as bold as to think we have our lives completely under our own control and that we have absolute autonomy from outside influences beyond our plans. Now whether it was God who caused that hurricane force storm to prove to the ship owner, the pilot and the centurion that they should have listened to Paul in the first place, or that the storm was just the forces of nature which, again, God had set in motion, it changed their lives in such a dramatic way they became men without hope. They were facing their mortality and their inability to save themselves. We cannot afford to even think we are in control of our own destiny as we are but the creation of God and he will direct our paths. God has absolute authority, complete sovereignty and we cannot live without hope. No matter what difficult situations in life bring us we have to believe it is because of the will of God or because we, like those men made a stupid choice, a bad decision based on human understanding rather than Godly advice. If it is God, than we have to see the reason, and know that he desires us to change the course of our journey in some manner. We cannot live without hope as we know he will never forsake us, and that his love for us always prevails and thus he knows what is best for our life. The truth here is that we should not set sail from where we are unless God directs us so. Had they listened to Paul, who had heard from God, to stay in port and not put out to sea, even though all appeared fine, they would not have experienced all that hardship and thus lost all hope. In addition, which we will see, the ship owner lost all his cargo, thus his profit, as well as his ship, which may well have put him in serious debt. We are not sure if this desire to achieve his profit was a factor in his decision to press on, even against the advice of a Godly man, but moving on when God advises to stay can be disastrous, both to life itself as well as to any material gain we hope to have. Our lesson here is to make sure we know what God desires in our life, what he is leading, then we just need to follow. In doing so we can forego a bad choice.