And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Acts 19:17-20

Two more observations on this short passage:

First, don’t miss that when people come to faith in Christ we need to forsake whatever opposes Christ. Many things in our lives that are not about Christ do not oppose Him. And as long as these things remain in their proper place in our priorities, that’s fine. Hobbies, sports, and some entertainment fall into this benign category. Even these good things can become dangerous, though, when our love for them rivals our love for Christ.

There are other things in our lives that must go! In the text, pursuits regarding the occult had to go. Are we holding onto sinful interests in our lives that we must let go of?

Second, as those in the text found, ejecting some things from our lives for the sake of following Christ will cost us. Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The market value of what the new believers in Acts 19 tossed out was 50,000 pieces of silver. 50,000 is 1,667 times more than 30! Maybe letting go of what we must discard will costs us dearly (and maybe not only in terms of money!), but to quote Jesus, “What will a man give in exchange for his soul?”