A Fair Hearing?

The next day, since he wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews, he released him and instructed the chief priests and all the Sanhedrin to convene. Then he brought Paul down and placed him before them. Paul looked intently at the Sanhedrin and said, "Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience until this day." But the high priest Ananias ordered those who were standing next to him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, "God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! You are sitting there judging me according to the law, and in violation of the law are you ordering me to be struck?" Acts 22:30-23:3

As if a fair hearing as going to happen. The commander wanted to understand something so deep and terrible, he was not going to obtain a good result. What makes a group of people behave so emotionally and illogically? Religion! Or should I say, religious spirits!

Paul starts well but Annanias takes exception to his opening address and Paul turns on him, go Paul! Nothing meek and mild about Paul. He smacked Annanias back, verbally.

There are times I beat myself up about confrontation, yesterday being one of those days. I have a client who has taken forever, we have had numerous meetings and now he was wanting more information in comparison to his existing product, which I had done a comparison with in the first place. I confronted him, nicely but firmly. If you go your own way, you are the financial planner and when things go wrong you don't have me. Go with my recommendation and you have someone who is conscientiously working for you and who will never turn her back on you. You choose!

He emailed me with an offer to pay now and decide later. While I wanted both I will settle for being paid. This man was always going to take a long time to decide, or not. However I needed to be paid. Had I continued to be the nice person and forever putting up with changes I would have gotten nowhere.

There are times you must confront, be wise in doing so. We will see later Paul was very wise but the vicious people were not going to let him live if they could have their way. However, ultimately God is Lord, not man.

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