Discipleship
will cost
you yours.
Seven brothers in Ephesus tried to use a name that wasn't theirs, and it cost them their clothes and their dignity in front of the whole city.
Seven brothers in Ephesus watch a man tear at his own skin, thrown by something they cannot see. They've heard about Jesus. They've watched Paul say his name and seen things happen because of it. So they try it themselves: "In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you." The demon in the man answers back. It knows Jesus. It knows Paul. It does not know them. The man attacks all seven, and they run into the street bleeding and half naked, the whole city watching.
JD Daniel, Compassion's outreach and care pastor, preached that scene from Acts 19 on Sunday, and used it to ask the room a harder question than whether they know about Jesus: whether they know him, or just know his name.
Believers
who had never
heard of him
The chapter opens with Paul arriving in Ephesus and finding a small group of disciples who had never even heard there was a Holy Spirit. They had only received John's baptism, a baptism of repentance. Paul explained who Jesus was, they were baptized in his name, and when Paul laid hands on them the Holy Spirit came and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. From there Paul reasoned in the synagogue for three months, then moved his teaching to a lecture hall and kept at it daily for two years, until, Luke writes, the whole province had heard the word of the Lord.
That's the setup for the sons of Sceva. They had watched all of it. They just never let it become theirs.
Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?
Acts 19:15
Fear fell over the city after that. Many who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls and burned them publicly, a fortune's worth of them. Daniel didn't treat that as a strange first-century detail. He treated it as the same question he's still asking himself: what's the mixture in his own life that looks like faith but isn't quite surrendered.
Savior
for thirteen
years
Daniel became a believer on November 22, 2013, in a moment he described as Jesus's love entering a vehicle and changing both his life and the life of the person driving. But salvation and lordship were two different moments for him, separated by years he spent holding onto something he wasn't ready to release. He described almost eight years homeless, drug use, jail, and a mother's death in 2020 that sent him back into a cycle of getting sober and losing it again through 2024.
"Salvation cost Jesus his life," Daniel said, "but discipleship will cost you yours." He said it plainly, without dressing it up: Jesus never told anyone to pick up their cross and their baggage. Just the cross.
The distinction he kept coming back to: religion hands you a formula, do this and you'll get that. Relationship puts the answer inside you instead. "Religion will give you a formula," he said, "but relationship will give you the solution and put it inside of you."
Have you
lost your
love
Daniel pointed forward to Revelation, where Jesus writes back to this same church decades later. By then the Ephesians had cleaned up everything Paul once confronted. Jesus tells them they've done all the right things, and then adds one complaint: they've lost their first love. Daniel said that line wrecked him this week while he prepared the message, because it's possible to get every action right and still be running on fumes instead of relationship.
He asked the church two questions before inviting people to the altar: is your heart postured in love, or caught up in doing. And are you as desperate for Jesus to lead you as you were for him to save you. The service ended with cards at the front and a bonfire planned outside, so people could name what needed to be burned rather than just talked about.
There's more
than one post
can carry
Daniel covered a lot of ground Sunday, from his own story to the sons of Sceva to a church still doing everything right forty years later. The full message is worth your time.
Hope changes
everything.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.