1. “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss.
  2. But now I urge you to keep up your courage because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed.
Verse 21.22

Today I found that God was with his servant who is doing the mission of God. And He let the way of how to escape from the danger and what was the result of not obeying the order.

I find that the Acts are so detailed in describing the situation. In Chapter 27, the situation of the urgent status was described very detail and used so many technical words. I have worked in the shipbuilding industry for so many years so I am professional with words about a ship so I am so astonished at the professional words used in chapter 27. This is supporting that these Acts are true and Luke tried so much to describe all the facts in reality to let the emperor know about Jesus.

God has shown the future’s danger to Paul through the angel so Paul had known before sailing but the other people did not believe it. They did not know the future and they did not see that kind of miracle before. So they did not believe it and even they did not have faith in God or Paul.

So it seems that it is natural they did not follow Paul’s warning before sailing. Furthermore, the sailing means big earnings of profit so they did not want to delay the departure. But the centurion might experience God’s work through Paul because he was with Paul so a long time. But he did not trust Paul and God enough, even though he gave some freedom to Paul from that time before sailing.

Through this chapter, we can get a lesson like this. The result of not believing in and not obeying God’s direction is disaster and death. In our lives, if we don’t follow God’s words then the result is a big suffering and even death.

And we can know also God is helping a true believer and giving us a second chance even though we did not obey his direction at first which means God is giving us enough chance to turn back from the wrong way to the right way to God. He is giving us some more chances to turn back from the wrong action to the right.

In this life, we can fall into a wrong way whether those actions were intentional acts or not. Because our flesh is so weak to fall into temptation in this world. But God looks at the core in us. If we have the real mind to love God then He knows our mind. Peter has confessed that he loved Jesus even though he failed to keep high auth before Jesus’ capture. Peter was a weak human at that time so he fell to the wrong choice and after that, he did some mistakes during his life in this world as commented by Paul. But the core in him is truly a lover of Jesus and he showed his love throughout his life even though he had some defects. David is the same as Peter. He did some big fault in that he killed his sincere solder and got his wife instead. This was a big fault to go to death even in this world. But God knew the core that he loved God so much and gave him a second chance to turn back from his fault.

All the sins in this world get back to us someday, so we have to face the result of our wrong actions. But the more important is our second judge by God. Our soul is to be saved from the second death. We have to get eternal life in Heaven because Heaven is much more precious than this world. We can enjoy our eternal pleasure there and can live in this world without fear of death and judgment after death.

I have to turn back from the wrong way even though failed at first because God is giving me a second chance. I have to obey his direction to find a good way to sail in this life. If not I will undergo a suffering experience. If I don’t turn back at a second chance then I can lose my life.

From now on, I would like to live with God’s words and turn back from my wrongdoing completely. This is wisdom. I would like to find joy in God, not in the world. I would like to truly realize that the joy in God is more delightful than the joy in the world. I would like to get more faith in God and Jesus not to be shaken. The way to get perfect faith in this world is to pray to God always and live life through faith in God based on his words.