52 Men of the Bible - The StudiesSample

# 46\. Ananias ## Explore This is not an easy part of the Bible to ‘get along with’ as we like to think of God as all merciful and beyond this sort of smiting from heaven stuff, but it happened, so we need to deal with it. In the chapter on Ananias, Carl Beech calls this out and reveals that God, in this instance anyway, wasn’t willing to let lies and dishonesty pass by without consequence. Idea 1: Honesty I remember hearing a story about a man who was asked by his boss to lie for him, the employee refused to do it and told his boss he wouldn’t lie for him to cover this situation up. The boss was angry and demanded to know why not. The reply from the employee was a simple one, ‘if I can lie for you I can lie to you, and I don’t want that ever to be on the table.’ I loved that, talk about integrity. Perhaps we can see this even more sharply today with the lack of integrity of some of our MPs and since the leak of things like the Paradise Papers and the moral dishonesty so prevalent amongst the elite wealthy. What does honesty look like for you at work, at home or in your social life? Is this something you pursue and fight for in your life? Idea 2: Yes The amount of times I have said yes to stuff without really giving it much thought, consideration or - guess what - prayer, is more than just a few times. I take stuff on and agree to things and then realise that this wasn’t a good idea and my ‘yes’ starts to become ‘maybe.’ In our journey as Christian men, I think that the idea of being a bloke who will give you a straight answer after some consideration that you know I will carry through, would be amazing. For us to say yes to stuff in our lives and mean it, be 100% committed, all in, because we have made our ‘yes, yes!’ Have there been ‘yes’ things for you that have really turned into a no, and you’ve searched for ways out of it? Could that have been avoided? Did it cause difficulty and upset? Idea 3: No For some of us we say yes to everything and in actual fact we need to be saying ‘no’ a lot more. We take on as much as we can in some attempt to please people and then run ourselves ragged trying to make good on all the ‘yes’ moments. But in the same way, maybe some of us need to stop saying ‘no’ as much. Maybe we know we could do more and get more involved but sitting this side of the ‘no’ fence keeps us out of commitment, effort and getting too involved. Either way, the emphasis here in all this seems to be, be sure of how you use ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ ## Action Is there stuff coming up or even things right now that need you to commit yourself in that require your ‘yes’ or ‘no?’