Most people don’t think of Paul in the Bible as one is who a great example of what kind of person we should all be…but he was.
If you or I were tossed into the kind of prisons that he was put into in his day…dark, dingy, cold, and even wet…how would we feel? Locked away in prison most of us would not act like he did when he was there. What would you occupy your mind with hour by hour, day after day? His life was in a prison for a major part of his life of ministry. Think about that. What would you do in his circumstances? What kind of person would you become?
I would venture to say that most would grow pretty angry, depressed, bitter, frustrated, hopeless, and no hope left in them. In our day and age (at least in America) our prison system is nothing like what Paul was put into yet he never lost hope, never stopped praising God, and the things he said while in there that no matter our circumstances in life we can always have hope.
The Bible tells us that from a prison dungeon, he sang praises to God, from another he wrote the sacred words of scripture. He didn’t just sit there in the dark and dingly place feeling sorry for himself. Out of that dark and dingy cell the word of God came forth…and it has been going around the world ever since. Desmios (the word for this) is a prisoner, a prisoner bound, shacked, impeded, even disabled . But Paul was not bound even while in chains and in his eyes he was not shackled as we think of being shackled. He didn’t see life as we do…he saw it as what it could be. Even in that dark and dingy cell he refused to be defined and limited by the walls of his circumstances.
He is the example of what we should act like. Even in this crazy and evil world we are living (and it will get worse) we are to live a life unhindered by our circumstances. We are to live our life to the fullness of what God would want us to live, become the person God wants us to become, and we are to walk in the will of God. When we live as God desire then we will break the chains that bind us and we will let the chains fall. Someone is saying right now that Jesus is our greatest example and He surely is, however, in the Bible He has given us many examples of who we should be, how we should act, and Paul is one of those. As Paul didn’t give up no matter how bad things got…we are not to give up either. We have a hope of heaven and we can be victorious no matter what we face while upon this fallen world we are living in. We must stand on the word of God, stay focused on Jesus…and try to do all we can for the kingdom of God. It is not enough that you accept Jesus as your Lord…you be the one to tell someone else about Jesus so they can also know Him as well. You be the one to tell others of the great love of Jesus for them, and you also stay strong no matter what you go through for you can be that overcomer.