On Sunday we met to break bread. Paul was discussing Scripture with the people. Since he intended to leave the next day, he kept talking until midnight. (Many lamps were lit in the upstairs room where we were meeting.) A young man named Eutychus was sitting in a window. As Paul was talking on and on, Eutychus was gradually falling asleep. Finally, overcome by sleep, he fell from the third story and was dead when they picked him up.
Acts 20:7-9 GW
His name signifies one that had good fortune—Eutychus, bene fortunatus. Whether he was brought to the meeting in order to be healed or he was just an attendee, we know that the meeting was meant to do him some good especially due to the Word, which Paul was preaching.
Many Christians go to church, having the same intention but somehow, along the line -like Eutychus- we become distracted with things by which we ultimately are destroyed.
That the man Paul ‘kept talking until midnight’ does not justify Eutychus' act of sleeping. We must do whatever we can to maintain focus when it comes to the things of God. Yes, you are married... You have a job that takes much of your time... Your leadership role in church is so demanding... You have children to look after... You are a student and you have many books to read. None of these should ever justify your act of turning cold feet towards the things of God (things that bring spiritual progress).
Despite the ‘many lamps (that) were lit in the upstairs room where (they) were meeting’, this man was still bent on sleeping off. There might be people around him who tried to call him to order and maybe he just did not listen. Just like when people begin to call you up to know why you were not at rehearsals, the prayer meeting, church service and you do not have logical explanations but you just continue in your absenteeism. That is the Eutychus spirit at work and it always heads toward self-destruction.
Distraction creeps in gradually into an individual’s life ‘Eutychus was gradually falling asleep’.
For this reason we must pay closer attention to what we have heard. Then we won't drift away from the truth.
Hebrews 2:1 GW
To drift is a gradual process. When a man begins to drift/is distracted from the Word of God (prayer and fellowship), he begins to die (experience dryness).
The problem at the all night meeting where Paul preached was that Eutychus made a wrong decision of sleeping off. Sleep in the life of a Christian connotes spiritual dormancy or stagnation, better put, ‘spiritual retrogression’. The will of the devil is to get people to the sleeping position where they begin to lose appetite for spiritual things and they become sense-ruled Christians. His desire is not only to make them sleep but to make then fall.
The ultimate goal of the devil is to see Christians become so distracted that they fall and are taken up dead.
I urge you to remain focused on God and His word in the face of (legitimate) distractions for this is the way to prosper in God.
All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. You're after one that's gold eternally. I don't know about you, but I'm running hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got. No sloppy living for me! I'm staying alert and in top condition. I'm not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.
1 Corinthians 9:25-27 MSG
