What Does God Mean By Unhindered?

And he stayed two full years in his own rented quarters and was welcoming all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered. (Acts 28:30-31 NASB)

The setting is Paul in Rome, finally.  Shipwrecked on Malta after a huge storm drove him, his guards, and his companions all the way across the Mediterranean Sea, he makes it to Rome after serious hardship and danger.  He has met with the leading Jews who had not received any word or person concerning him from Judea, and they have heard the gospel and were in disagreement over it.  Now Paul stays in his lodging with a guard present at all times.  He didn't go out to the synagogue, they came to him.  He doesn't go out to meet others, he welcomes all who come to him.  He preaches and teaches, but from his lodging, and does so for two whole years.  Yet, as the NASB faithfully translates, the book of Acts ends with the word, "unhindered".

I have to wonder what God means by "unhindered" under these conditions.  The chains aren't a hindrance.  The storm on the way isn't/wasn't a hindrance.  The shipwreck wasn't a hindrance, the lodging with a soldier isn't a hindrance, and so also not leaving his quarters for two years.  These aren't hindrances.

Maybe I need a better understanding of hindrance, because I think of the word meaning "to make an activity more difficult" rather than actually "to cause an activity to stop".  To me it has more to do with "influence" than "control".  Well, if you believe as I have, we could both use a short lesson.  The word "hinder" has both ideas, to influence and control, because it refers to the attempt to control which may succeed (and therefore mean to control) or fail, perhaps for a time (and therefore mean to influence).

But to be unhindered would mean to be free from attempts to cause him to stop preaching.  At least the choice of this word in English carries that meaning.  The word in Greek which Luke used is akolytos which is only used here in all of the Christian Scriptures.  It's a compound word made up of the negative particle, and the word "to hinder".  The word, "to hinder", has the nuance of forbid as it's used in the Christian Scriptures.  So, to negate that would mean that Paul wasn't forbidden from preaching and teaching.

I suppose the point I'm walking around but not pulling out directly is that, to my Master, things that make something difficult for me do not mean that He doesn't want me to do it.  Just because a thing may have all sorts of obstacles does not mean it's the thing from which my Master is keeping me.  It could be that these obstacles are part of the blessing in His call or design for me. 

Even so, could it also be that what is "unhindered" isn't Paul at all, but the things preached and taught?  And so you get what I mean, consider that we are looking at such a preaching and teaching, and Paul is now dead.  That would seem the biggest hindrance of all, and yet here we are.  Perhaps what my Master meant by what He inspired Luke to record is that no obvious obstacles can hinder the Master of the universe from His purpose; not even the Emperor of Rome.  That is very reassuring to me.

It’s about my Master, even though it has a lot of me in it

One of my favorite things to do when I was in ministry was preaching.  When I was out of ministry and living back in California, I preached a Saturday service for my church, but without pay (my favorite ministry so far).  I really enjoyed the preaching, but my preaching never brought people to the church or to the Saturday worship.  One of the remarkable things about my experience preaching was when I felt the message was a disaster, how many were touched by it.  I learned, slowly, that it has so little to do with me, and so much to do with my Master.  I loved to preach, but it was always an exercise of my own spiritual development first, and so little of my ability.

Essentially, what I learned is that the preaching I did wasn’t about me either.  I could get really excited about a passage, pour myself into study and prayer, and then let all that excitement blow out all the results of my study and prayer all over the sanctuary.  That really didn’t have the effects I wanted.  I wanted people to join me in my excitement over what I found in the passage.  They really didn’t, or at least not enough of the time for me to consider it a normal response.  Even though my Master worked me over with a passage, He did His own different work with the congregation when I preached.  It was a really confusing lesson to learn.

When I took a course on storytelling, the instructor said that a story, once told, no longer belongs to the teller, but to the listeners.  I think sermons are like that as well, but for different reasons.  With stories, different elements impact different people at different points depending on their own life experiences.  With a sermon, I found that my Master as their Master worked on them using what was preached to affect His own ends.  Sometimes, and the most obvious examples, I saw when what He used was a very insignificant side comment, and what He did had little or nothing to do with my “main point” of the sermon.

This blog is sort of like that as well.  I put into these entries what I sense my Master doing in me, and He does with them whatever He wants in others.  With this media, He can use them long after I’ve written them.  At least I hope He uses them.  I have to remind myself that it’s not about me even though I write about what’s going on with me.  These, like the sermons, are about my Master.  Once written, they really don’t even belong to me anymore.  Like time, they are things in the past hopefully affecting a better future with my Master.  I should probably survey them from the beginning to see if there is any progression.

So here is another entry.   I will do another twelve (up to December 15), and then post the entries that never made it to the blog site but were either diary or Facebook entries last year (they begin on December 16, 2010).  After that I think I will begin to work on the Gospel of John and a project to survey examples of Hebrew Torah legal texts searching for relevant lessons.  I won’t do both every day, and my plan is to work on them sort of back and forth.  But my plans are just ideas I pursue while waiting for my Master to direct me into something else.  I have no idea how long such blogs will run.  Welcome to the Winter of my Contentment.  It feels…odd, but very peaceful.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, December 3