“Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.”

                       -Acts 19:19-20

Some of the greatest outpourings of the Holy Ghost took place in the book of Acts. People were saved by the thousands (Acts 2:41), and the Lord added to His church daily (Acts 2:47). But contrary to what people often suggest today, God did not pour out of His Spirit so freely just to get people’s attention. The reason we find such amazing miracles and groundbreaking revivals is because the early church knew what it meant to live a holy and sanctified life.

On the other hand, many people today are under the false assumption that you can have as much of the world as you want without it hindering your walk with the Lord. They entertain themselves with murder and vampires on Saturday, yet leave church confused on Sunday because they didn’t feel the Lord like they thought they were supposed to. While their morning might include a short Scripture reading, the evening hours are spent indulged in books unworthy of sharing the same shelf with the Word of God. Apparently unaware that a Christian “…cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils” (I Corinthians 10:21), they continue on in this miserable state of hypocrisy, hoping that they’ll soon come out of the valley they unwittingly keep throwing themself back into.

As Christians, however, we should follow the example of the Ephesians and remove from our lives anything offensive to God. When they realized that the books they read were not holy, they gathered them together and burnt them. No, they didn’t sell them on E-bay and cause someone else to stumble; they destroyed the evil once and for all. The Scripture goes on to say that it was this very act that caused the Word of God to spread rapidly through the area (verse 20). In the same way, we can expect God to work mightily in our lives when we begin removing those things that have no place in our life. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you (James 4:8).

“Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.”

                        -Deuteronomy 7:26