Repentance & Rest

Paul arrives in Ephesus and meets a dozen disciples who know only John’s baptism and have never heard of the Holy Spirit. After they are baptized in Jesus’ name, Paul lays hands on them, and the Spirit comes upon them as they speak in tongues and prophesy. Paul teaches daily for two years while God works extraordinary miracles through him, but traveling exorcists who borrow Jesus’ name without knowing Him are beaten and driven out by a possessed man. Awe grips the city, and many believers confess their past and burn their sorcery scrolls as the word of the Lord spreads. If someone asked you what you’ve received from God, what would you say?

Paul arrives in Corinth and joins Aquila and Priscilla in their tentmaking trade, reasoning in the synagogue each Sabbath until, pressed in spirit, he testifies that Jesus is the Christ and turns to the Gentiles. Though the Lord assures him in a night vision that he is not alone, Paul stays eighteen months teaching God’s word as many Corinthians believe and are baptized, even as he is dragged before the proconsul Gallio and dismissed. He sails on with Priscilla and Aquila, who later take aside the eloquent Apollos, fervent in spirit and mighty in the Scriptures, and explain the way of God more accurately. Encouraged by the brothers in Ephesus, Apollos crosses to Achaia and, with the help of the believers there, powerfully shows from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. Who in your life might God be using to sharpen your understanding, and how can you stay humble enough to receive it?

Wind roars through a Jerusalem room and fire settles on the faithful, who speak in tongues unknown as three thousand answer the call. Persecution scatters them like seed, yet Philip baptizes an Ethiopian by the roadside and Saul falls blind beneath a blazing light on the Damascus road. At Cornelius’s table, Gentiles burst into tongues, and Antioch sends Paul and Barnabas over the sea. Through Macedonia and Greece the message presses on to Philippi, Thessalonica, and Athens, while ahead wait chains in Jerusalem and a storm-tossed road to Rome...

Paul walks through Athens and sees a city full of idols, so he reasons daily in the synagogue and the marketplace. Before the philosophers on the Areopagus, he points to an altar "To an unknown god" and says this God made everyone so that they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from any of them. He calls them to repent in light of the man God raised from the dead, and some mock him while others want to hear more. A few, including Dionysius and Damaris, join him and believe. What are you searching for that nothing you've found has fully satisfied?

Paul and Silas reach Thessalonica, where Paul spends three Sabbaths reasoning from the Scriptures, and though some believe, jealous opponents stir up a mob and the believers send the missionaries away by night. In Berea, the people receive the message eagerly and search the Scriptures daily to verify it. When agitators follow from Thessalonica, Paul is sent on to the coast while Silas and Timothy stay behind. When you hear something new about your faith, do you accept it at face value, or do you test it against the Scriptures?

Paul and Silas free a slave girl from a spirit that has controlled her voice and her master's profits, and the men who lose money from this stir up a crowd against them. Beaten and locked in the innermost cell with their feet in stocks, Paul and Silas pray and sing at midnight until an earthquake shakes open every door and loosens every chain. The jailer, ready to take his own life believing his prisoners have fled, instead finds them all still there and asks what he must do to be saved. By morning the same chains that held them become the reason a whole household is baptized and the magistrates themselves come to apologize. What chains in your own life might God want to shake loose?

Paul and Barnabas split over Mark, and each moves forward with a different partner rather than letting the disagreement stall the mission. Paul picks up Timothy in Lystra and, guided by a vision, redirects the journey toward Macedonia instead of the path he'd planned. In Philippi he meets Lydia, a merchant who listens closely, believes, and immediately opens her home to the travelers. What she offers becomes the basis for a church that grows from that one act of welcome. Where in your life is God asking you to loosen your grip on your own plan, or open your door to someone he's placed in your path?

A dispute erupts over whether Gentile converts must be circumcised, so Paul and Barnabas bring the question to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. After hearing Peter's testimony about the Holy Spirit falling on Gentiles, and Paul and Barnabas's account of God's work among them, James proposes that Gentiles be spared circumcision but asked to avoid idol-tainted food, sexual immorality, and blood. The council sends this decision by letter to the churches, and the believers who receive it rejoice. When has hearing someone else's experience changed a conviction you were holding firmly to?

Paul and Barnabas preach in Antioch, and the word spreads until nearly the whole city turns out to hear it. Opposition drives them from town to town, yet the message keeps advancing through Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, gathering believers and enduring persecution at every stop. They return to Antioch and report how God has opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. What would it mean to trust God with results you can't control?