Hey, everybody. This is Father John Ricardo with Acts 29. And in the middle of all the craziness

and the uncertainty that's going on right now, it seems from our perspective as a team that it's

worth using these days to reflect in a more deliberate way on the scriptures every day, which

for many of us now is the only spiritual food that we're receiving. And so we're going to do a

special podcast series simply entitled, Be Not Afraid, God's Word in Uncertain Times. And we'll try to

post something every day, usually reflecting on the scriptures, so that we can listen in on what

God is trying to say to us in these days.

As we're getting closer to the day of Pentecost and the conclusion of the season of Easter,

we're also getting close to the conclusion to the Acts of the Apostles, which we've been hearing from, or more likely reading every day throughout these last 40-plus days now.

So yesterday and today, we've been hearing of Paul's farewell to the presbyters,

the elders, the leaders of the church in Ephesus as he was departing for the ship

at Miletus.

And he warns us today, even as he warned them, of the need to be

vigilant, because savage wolves, he says, will come among us, and they will not spare the flock.

And from your own group, our own group, Paul warns, the Holy Spirit warns,

men will come forward, perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them. So be

vigilant, he says. Stay alert, be awake, be fully alive. And as I was praying with this passage, what came to mind is

a line that N.T. Wright often says about Paul, which I think maybe many of us don't usually

think about. He simply argues that Paul wasn't trying, contrary to how we might think about it, to tell the disciples, the people that he was preaching to what to think.

Paul was trying to teach them how to think.

That's in many ways what the gospel is all about.

The call to repentance, remember, is a word which literally means to change your mind, to change the way you think.

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