Take a moment to read Acts 14:8-20 before reading the devotional below.
I don’t know about you, but my day has not involved healing a crippled man, having crowds try to worship me, tearing my clothes in anguish and getting pummeled with rocks so badly that people leave me for dead. In yesterday’s post, we wrestled with the difference between the comfort of our American lives and Paul’s missionary life. And I think sometimes we tell ourselves that he was meant to be different, or that only people called to be overseas missionaries live that kind of life. But what if we are all called to be missionaries like this?
I notice a pattern in the ministry of Paul and Barnabas — they preach, miracles follow, and then they win over a vast crowd of regular, everyday people. In today’s passage, those powerful and jealous Jewish leaders from Antioch and Iconium have followed Paul and Barnabas in order to kill them. Sometimes, we think that “risk” means getting rejected by the cashier in the grocery store when we say, “Merry Christmas.” Or we think we are daring for the Gospel when we preach in ways that do not at all win others over. Yes, Paul and Barnabas were offending people, but they were offending the same people that Jesus did: the religious powerhouses.
When you are boldly preaching the Gospel, the masses will be drawn to your message. If we are simply offending people at our workplaces by judging their lives, we are not helping them see Jesus at all. Somehow we have taken “persecution” to mean something very different than it meant for the early church, and it can sometimes be a license to be socially offensive. Let’s preach to the poor, heal those who cannot walk, tell of a love greater than anyone has ever known. Some people won’t like it, but it won’t be who you think.