Monday, March 16, 2009

a risky business

Acts 14: 19 Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowds to their side. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead. 20 But as the believers gathered around him, he got up and went back into the town. The next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe.

I wonder how I'd feel if the folks who make up the downtown population treated me like Paul if I would be so interested in being a part of a presence downtown?

How ready would you be to be identified as an active Christ follower if stoning, or some other physical mayhem, were a viable possibility as a response to your discipleship to Jesus?

Have we grown a bit prissy in the safety of our enclave in the Christianized world? Do we know what true risk is?

Would our "boldness" as believers be such if we could be beaten up for it?

These are just some of the things I thought about this morning as I read Acts 14, where Paul & Barnabas has success in spreading the Gospel, while at the same time, people wanted to kill them.

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