What do all of these have in common?

Please take a moment to read over this list to see if you can answer the question, “What do all of these have in common?” Are you ready?

Do you have any guesses as to what all those places have in common?

What do you think? Any guesses?

The answer is kind of crazy.

 

The Answer…

In Acts 14, Paul was stoned in Lystra for helping a crippled person. The person had been lame his entire life. The town’s people, observing what happened, thought that Paul and Barnabas must be Zeus and Hermes – the gods come down in the flesh. When Paul explained that they were only men and called upon them to repent and accept Jesus as the one true God, the people became so angry they stoned him.

What?? They stoned Paul and then drug him out of town thinking he was dead. The people left him lying there.

The Bible explains that the band of Christ-followers then surrounded him. Luke describes it, “However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city” (Acts 14:20). God helped him with the strength to get up and go back into the city to sleep overnight.

OK…ready for the answer? I don’t want you to miss this. What does that list of cities have in common?

Here it is:

“And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe” (Acts 14:20).

Paul got up the next morning and went to Derbe.

“And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch,…” (Acts 14:21).

The list in the text of Acts 14 goes on.

Paul got up the very next day and went on the next city, and the next, and the next, and so forth to share the Gospel, disciple, and encourage people in the Lord.

Can you believe it? One day stoned and left for dead — the next day walking to the next city to share the Gospel again!

The. Next. Day.

 

What about you this week?

Will you be faithful to live for Jesus? Will you love God supremely and love others sincerely? What will it take to throw you off your game? Probably for most of us, it will take a lot less than getting stoned. And, even in that instance, Paul still got up the next day and continued.

May we walk in the Spirit and be faithful today and this week as well!

 

Image Credit Tim Foster