“The Young Fortune-Teller” Pastor Jacqueline Hines May 29, 2022

 

“The Young Fortune-Teller”

Pastor Jacqueline Hines

May 29, 2022

What happened in the book of Acts chapter 16 does not happen every day. Paul and some of Jesus’ disciples were on their way to pray –  that is a good thing. It is quite American for Christians to go to prayer. On their way, they saw a slave girl. That is not unusual either. On our way to anywhere these days, we may see persons who are in trouble, persons both young and old who have been made captive, enslaved by poverty, addictions, or one evil spirit or another, such as a murderous spirit, a lying spirit or a spirit of robbery. The other day I heard of a teenager who was surprised he was arrested because he only stole a little of someone else’s property. 

The slave girl was being used and abused. She was able to predict the future. She was a fortune teller, trained to be perceptive as well as deceptive. Fortune telling is big business as you can imagine. You may remember that psychic phone service that suddenly went out of business and somebody was surprised that being psychics, they did not predict or prevent their own future.

We can only imagine where this young fortune teller’s family was. We can only imagine where she slept at night or if she had enough to eat. We can only imagine. Of course, her slaveholder’s motive was a common one. Her slaveholder’s motive was money.  When we are anxious about life, we long to see into our future so we can prepare for good news or bad news. Sometimes we make heavy investments in knowing or guaranteeing our future by being greedy.

Recently, I heard a talk on Centralia that has an abandoned coal mine. A dumpster fire set the whole mine ablaze. It has been burning underground for over fifty years. What caught my attention was not the burning, but hearing that there were pillars in the mind made of coal. They kept the mine from collapsing. Incredibly, there were those who, tempted by greed, would dare to mine the pillars risking collapse leading to injury and death. Greed can be deadly.

As Christians, we understand the future of our

life is in God’s hands. God tells us what we need to know. God has many ways to tell us the direction our life is going. God may use prophets, dreams, or just plain common sense. God may give us information that is clear and definite. At other times, we may get hints and clues. We may also get options. I recall letting an inmate know that he would definitely get a job in a kitchen washing dishes, but he did not want to wash dishes. Another person wanted a better job and was given an opportunity to do a few weeks of training, but she refused. At times we can reasonably predict our own path through the options we have or don’t have or the choices we make or don’t make.

You don’t have to be holy to be used to predict or guide someone into their future. The gifts of God are without repentance. I knew a man who wore rings in several parts of his body, seen and unseen. He was a gifted hair dresser and a sweet soul. He had little to do with the church. He experimented with drugs and a list of other dangers, BUT, what he predicted about my life was accurate and clear. God uses whom God chooses. God has a purpose and a plan that is bigger than our biases.

Fortune tellers are big business preying on the fears of the forlorn as well as the faithful. There is profit in all kinds of evil and oppression. Greed kills, the greedy or the needy.

It is said the love of money is the root of ALL evil. Money is wonderful. However, the love of money is hazardous to one’s spiritual, emotional, and physical health. Still, we all know what a challenge it is to be good stewards of the resources God gives us. The spiritual complexity of money is endless. However, the bottom line is that all that we have and ever hope to be, we owe it all to God. The Holy Spirit can help us have a right relationship with our valuables, especially our money.

A woman said to me that a coworker asked to borrow her car. She was grateful God gave her the car, so she loaned it freely and did not want to pry into WHY he wanted to borrow the car. In prayer, she believed God revealed to her that he was using the car so as not to be detected by his wife while he was out with his girlfriend. We can only imagine how awkward it was to say “no” the next time he asked. We belong to God. We are bought with a price. That price is submission to God’s will and not our own. The price is to put no other God’s before the one God.

The slave girls was under the influence of her captors. Strange things happen when we are captured. One thing that may happen is that instead of taking an opportunity to become free, an enslaved person may develop Stockholm syndrome wherein they begin to identify with and empathize with their captor or abuser and their goals.

Police officers have said that their most dangerous assignments is in a domestic violence call. When the officer arrives on sight to confront or arrest the perpetrator, the victim often assaults the officer who has come to help.

Whatever was happening with this slave girl was no simple matter. As Paul and the others were sharing the gospel, she was following them and shouting. Can you imagine someone following you yelling these words, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” We can only speculate as to why she was following them and why she was saying what she was saying. One wonders if her captors made her do it because they were trying to irritate Paul and the others in order to get them off their corner, to rid themselves of the competition for the territory.

In any case don’t you think it is very annoying to have someone follow you against your will? Isn’t it a violation of one’s space, an intrusion, and harassment?

After a few days of her following them around and yelling, Paul was annoyed to the point that he did something that does not happen every day in the Christian circles that many of us find ourselves in. Many Christians may have lost their temper and harassed the girl or called the police or yelled at her to get lost, perhaps making her hardship even worse.

Paul turned around and spoke to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. She was no longer able to predict the future for her slaveholders. That may not be a model for any of us to follow. We may not do what Paul did. If we could, then every slave in the world would be free by next week. If we could free every used and abused person on the planet we would.

I asked myself why Paul did not deliver her of that fortune-telling spirit as soon as he found out about it, but I realize no one of us is called to serve everyone all the time. God’s timing is always best. God’s direction is right. Whether we believe it or not, God is doing something about evil all the time.

A few years ago, it was good news that the world’s poverty level had gone down significantly. However, the last two years of the pandemic has been extremely profitable for some. For the last year or so, there has been a new billionaire on the books every 30 days. Some project that at the same time there are 100 million people  plummeting into poverty. Those statistics keep us on our knees, and they should.  

Even in times of trouble, we do well to please and praise God every day and repent every hour. As Michael Smith’s song goes, “The word says, for the spirit of heaviness, wear the garment of praise. That’s how we fight our battles… That’s how we fight our battles.”

As Christians, we come into the fold like meek and mild sheep. We may not be aware that there are wolves waiting in the wings. We have no thoughts about those who are in trouble and the fierce battles that are ahead of us, making us soldiers of the cross, enlisting us in the army of the Lord. Now we know!

Paul saw a young person in trouble and the Holy Spirit used him to bless her, just as God uses us to bless young people all the time. When the evil spirit left this slave girl, the slaveholders lost their profits. Instead of being grateful, they treated him, of course, like a criminal. They dragged him to jail, stripped him, tortured him, beat him, and put him in chains.  Paul was in and out of jail all the time. Hopefully, every church would still welcome him.  Paul still had the love for God and a heart to worship, singing hymns in jail. The Holy Spirit even did a miraculous work through Paul and Silas. There was an earthquake. The chains were broken and one of the guards was about to kill himself knowing he would be killed by the Romans for allowing prisoners to escape. Paul stopped him when he shouted according to verse 28.  ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” That jailer and his family became Christians. He fed them and washed their wounds. God is good all the time.

God may not use us to bless young people in trouble in the same way that God used Paul, but God will use us to engage in spiritual battle so that one less youth will become a captive.

Can’t we look at Buffalo, Texas, Sandy Hook, Twitter and Tik Tok and see the need? There are more guns than people, more cars than children and more children killed by guns than cars. Is it time to control the guns? The horrors are here every month, every week, every day. Can’t we look at the wondrous ways God works in our lives and see that God is able to use us and guide us to pray and act in ways that heal and deliver?

Like Paul, we see God using us as we pray about everything, practice what we preach, and praise God from whom all blessings come, and keep coming. One of my favorite songs is Praise the Lord by Russ Taff. It seems to have had our morning’s text in mind with the words:

When you're up against a struggle that shatters all your dreams

And your hopes have been cruelly crushed by Satan's manifested schemes

And you feel the urge within you to submit to earthly fear

Don't let the faith you're standing in seem to disappear

Praise the Lord, He will work through those who praise Him

Praise the Lord, for our God inhabits praise.

Praise the Lord, for the chains that seem to bind you

Serve only to remind you, that they drop powerless behind you when you praise Him.

Pray about everything, practice what you preach, praise God anyhow. Do it today and watch God work. Amen.