Jay Grant’s Message on Acts 18:1-22
What Can We Learn From This Passage:
1. Even the best struggle with fears, disappointments, and discouragement. Even those with the highest levels of faith. Sometimes life can overwhelm us.
2. Paul is only able to succeed when he is at his lowest point because he perseveres. He keeps going. He doesn’t give up.
3. What motivates Paul’s perseverance? To keep going through beatings, stoning and imprisonment? And great discouragement? It’s love that drives him. Love for God, love for people, and love for the church, the Bride of Christ. 1 Corinthians 13:7 “Love bears anything/everything; believes the best; hopes under every circumstance; endures all things.”
4. This passage shows the joy of friendship, of a real brother/sister who is always there for us. How much we need each other. Paul needed Aquila/Priscilla, Silas and Timothy. I need you and you need me; to hold each other up; to tell each other we can make it.
5. Notice the anti-Semitism found in this section (vs 2 & 16,17); a problem throughout history culminating in the Holocaust but a rising problem again today, especially in Europe and the Middle East.
6. Paul’s consistent message everywhere he went was: “Believe in Jesus; believe He is the Messiah; and be baptized.”
7. The power of encouragement. There’s nothing like it to change someone’s life, give them a needed boost, and revive hope in the hopeless. Why did God give Paul Aquila/Priscilla and Silas/Timothy? Because they constantly encouraged Paul, stood with him, loved him.