Paul was more like us than we realise. He also got tired and despondent, he could only do the extraordinary things he did because of the love and power of Jesus Christ. When we reach the same lows as he did, we can be encouraged and strengthened in our faith that Jesus will supply our needs and raise us up to complete His purpose for us.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Paul encountered intelligent, educated people who considered themselves wise, cultured and sophisticated, but still believed nonsense about our inexistence, value and purpose because they believed that they made gods rather than that God made us. in 2000 years nothing has changed we still encounter people like this every day. Paul teaches us how to reach them with the truth, and give them every opportunity to know the One true God Who made us to know, love and worship Him.

The Bereans are people that we only hear of once or twice in the Bible - but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a lot from them. They received God’s Word the right way, and they responded to Him the right way. God’s plans are timeless and perfect, and we need to decide to join His plans and be part of His glorious work, or miss out on the opportunity of an eternal lifetime. There’s no time like the present to get involved.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is a massive blessing, and it carries with it a great responsibility to make disciples as we journey in our faith. Making disciples can be hard and thankless, it can become discouraging. Paul and Silas give us great insight into the way to deal with the challenges, of making disciples by praying for and being obedient to the strategic wisdom of Jesus Christ and trusting in Him to build His Church.

The Church is being attacked from outside and within. It always has been. How do you feel about the rampant evil that surrounds us, and the way it infiltrates the church? We should be aware of this, but never be disheartened and distracted from continuing the work of God to the very end. In the end He always wins. We can see His victory in Philippi, even though it looked like a loss, and we will see the same in our lives if we keep trusting, obeying and seeing things from Jesus’ perspective.

When big choice are before us, we naturally want to know what God wants us to do. But how? Too often we are preoccupied with the desire to be in control and have perfect knowledge before making a decision. Faith does not operate like this. Learning to keep going in trust and obedience until God changes our path is difficult but deeply rewarding in our journey with the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul Silas and Timothy show us how, and encourage us to keep going.

When we last look at Acts we saw the way that God uses all kinds of people, and their strengths and weaknesses, without giving up on them, to achieve His purposes. This passage introduces a very active and gifted person called Timothy. Timothy was effective because he had a knowledge of Scripture, the gift of the Holy Spirit and access to the communities that God sent him to reach. We all have access to a communities that need the Gospel. They may be age, culture or otherwise defined, who are particularly equipped to help access God’s Kingdom?

The news this week, like any week, can leave us in a distracted and anxious frame of mind. The more you hear about the events of this world and our human reaction to them and attempt to make sense of them, the more you realise how scarce truth is. We need truth - we crave it - but how can we know it, when even the Bible gets distorted and abused by unreliable human influence. The Scripture shows us what it is and how to study it, when we do what it teaches us, we have truth, love, joy and peace.

Why do Christians break bread and drink the blood of grapes? Our answer would probably be simply “to remember Jesus”. It’s good to ask questions about the Lord’s Table, but the Table also answers our deepest questions about suffering, life and death, good and evil, justice and mercy. The deeper we meditate on the Table the more our eyes are opened to the beauty and Truth of the Gospel.

From Acts we’ve seen that the Church, under the leadership of the Apostles fasted and prayed together at certain critical junctions, especially when selecting or sending out workers for Jesus Christ. Should we still fast, why and when?

Have you ever felt “out of your depth” and wanted to, or decided to quit? We know Jesus felt like this in the garden of Gethsemane - just before His arrest - but we also know that He never quit, and that He was strengthened by our Heavenly Father and empowered throughout His suffering, death and resurrection. Jesus never quits. He calls us to draw on His strength so that we will never quit and gives us great examples of perseverance and second chances, when even people like Paul give up on us.

When difficult things happen, things that test our faith, we can be sure that God can use them to actually strengthen our faith and the faith of others. It can take much time and painful effort, but God gives us three things to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones. See how God uses the Scriptures, Signs and wonders and the testimony of the Saints to turn serious stumbling blocks into faith strengthening blessings, even when we don’t realise that we need them.

Our mission is to make disciples of all nations, that means setting them free from sin and it’s consequences by sharing the Gospel and our testimony of what Jesus Christ has done for us. When anything, especially false teaching, threatens that mission we should be quick to deal with it, not getting distracted from our mission and not allowing it to rob us or others of our joy. We should draw together under the authority of the Church, be lead by the Scripture and the Holy Spirit and trust that God has already seen the problem coming and has a solution.

We can see a pattern of people humbling presenting themselves for service and asking God to send them out to make disciples. It starts with the prayer and worship of the Church and then follows with the obedience of those sent out to preach and minister His grace. Persecution seeks to interfere with the process but only serves to strengthen it. The process continues with new leaders being appointed and the cycle repeating. The Church is meant to grow and keep growing under this pattern, but always under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. How is our part of the Church growing, are we following the patter and the Holy Spirit?

The attempted murder of Paul shows us that evil is present, determined and relentless. Christians who want to serve Jesus will suffer. God’s Spirit in us is more powerful than all the enemy put together. We will be knocked down, but God can pick us up and keep us going. In order to be strengthened in our work for Him we need to understand that we’re not alone, that He has a purpose for us and that He will fulfil His promises to us. This will help us to rise up when we are knocked down and keep us going through the challenges of living out our faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul saw something in the way a crippled man was listening to the Gospel as he preached it. This set the man apart from the crowd, who could hear him speaking but didn’t believe. Thinking about the contrast between the two can help us to focus on what real faith in Jesus Christ is, and to appreciate it’s immeasurable power to save. See how he listens to learn not confirm, how he trusts in God not man and how he gives God the glory not man. Who are we like, the cripple or the crowd?

The way that people react to us sharing our faith will differ. Some will reject it strongly and even attack us, but that shouldn’t determine when we move on and when we persevere. A close reliance on the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit will help us to see great wonders done to save people, just like Paul and Barnabus did in a place called Iconium.

While God brings judgement on Israel’s disobedience and rebellion, He continually recovers them in His grace and mercy. The preaching of the Gospel first to the Jews, who widely reject it, is never wasted. God’s plans do not just survive the attacks of the enemy and the rejection and rebellion of people, they are more firmly established by them. From the rejection of Israel in the time of Moses, the murder of Jesus, the jealousy of the Jews at the power of the Gospel, their rejection of it, all the way to their subsequent jealousy of the gentiles who received it. God uses it all to establish His unbreakable eternal plans.

We are constantly being called to go out and share the Gospel. It’s God’s power and plan to bring humankind to repentance and to faith and relationship with Him. There is spiritual and physical opposition to this which can become frightening and demoralising. Faith in God and His irresistible power, delivered through the Gospel of Jesus, overcomes this opposition and brings astonishment, love, joy and peace to those who God is calling.