While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit grew agitated within him when he saw the city was full of idols.

(Acts 17:16)

The internal turmoil Paul experienced while waiting in Athens for his ministry partners, Silas and Timothy, has long impressed me. This was not a scheduled stop on their mission itinerary but rather a place to lay low and escape the uprising that his preaching had caused in Thessalonica and Berea. Nonetheless, Paul cannot help himself. He cannot lay low. He is too disturbed by the spiritual confusion that surrounds him to be silent, to let sleeping dogs lie. This disturbance within Paul’s soul catapults Paul into action, back into the fray, and the next thing you know he is once again arguing with Jews in the synagogue and even taking on the sophisticated Athenian philosophers in the marketplace. Paul is absolutely intrepid. He refuses to be intimidated by the intellectual elites.

I try to think of the last time that the spiritual condition of our world stirred me the way it did Paul on this occasion. I’m ashamed to say that I cannot recall a time when I was as troubled as Paul was in Athens over the lost state of our world, over the degree of spiritual confusion that surrounds me. What has happened to my love for the lost? Where has my boldness gone? Have I allowed the strident defiance of the world to all things religious to intimidate me into silence? Am I just laying low and waiting for the storm to pass?

I want to be agitated as Paul was. I want to be deeply moved once again by the spiritual condition of my neighbors, friends, and family – all who do not yet know the love of God in Christ. I do not mean that I consider myself wiser than they or spiritually superior to them. I mean rather that I sympathize with their confusion because I once shared it. Only by the grace of God and by the loving obedience of several of his servants did I ever come to be exposed to the truth of the gospel. Somehow, however, my heart is not rightly aligned with God as Paul’s was. I do not yet feel God’s agitation over his desperately lost and groping children. I know that I should and I very much want to but a number of lesser concerns seem to keep getting in the way.

Father,

Let me feel deep within my soul the same agitation that moved the apostle Paul to speak with such boldness and love to those around him who were lost. So closely align my heart and mind with yours that your love for the world begins to register in me, that I begin to feel your own disturbance at how lost the human beings whom you love are. Lord Jesus, your entire ministry was characterized by the Father’s relentless passion for the lost world. You lived in an almost constant state of agitation over our wretched state, and that agitation drove your ministry. Indeed, it drove you to the cross. Forgive me for the apathy and resignation that far too often sabotage my witness and silence my testimony. Holy Spirit, stir my heart with the same grief and restless sorrow that stirs you and propels your convicting ministry into the far reaches of the earth. Cultivate in me the same agitation with which you galvanized Paul and fill me with the same boldness, the same lack of self-consciousness that enabled him to speak to intellectuals, politicians, peasants, and paupers alike.

AMEN