Acts 19 records an occasion when people who became Christians showed their genuine repentance in a remarkable way:
Act 19:18 And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds.
19 Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
20 So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.
To put these numbers into some perspective, consider that one of the pieces of silver mentioned in this account was worth roughly “a day’s wages.”[1] According to the US Social Security Administration, “the national average wage index for 2011 [was] [$]42,979.61” (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html; accessed March 5, 2013). This works out to an average US daily salary of $117.75.
For books to be burnt today that roughly would be worth the equivalent of what was burned in the account recorded in Acts 19, people would burn $5,887,617.81 worth of books ($117.75 x 50,000)! Such a public display of true repentance would be an amazing testimony of the power of God’s word.
Although I did not do so publicly, after I was saved, God led me to destroy a large amount of ungodly music items that I had accumulated over more than two decades. I have no way of knowing what the total value of that material was, but I am sure that it was worth a fair amount of money.
If you profess to be a Christian, have you truly repented by ridding your life of any ungodly material possessions that you may have had over the years that were a vital part of your past sinful ways?
May God grant us all the grace to do whatever we may need to do in this respect in our lives today.
[1] “A drachma was a silver coin worth about a day’s wages.” (Footnote in The Comparative Study Bible, 2831)
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