July 4th - Acts 14:2–3

Acts 14:2–3 Some of the Jews, however, spurned God’s message and poisoned the minds of the Gentiles against Paul and Barnabas. But the apostles stayed there a long time, preaching boldly about the grace of the Lord. Paul and Barnabas were having an amazing time on their first missionary journey. A large number of people were becoming followers of Jesus. At the same time, they were meeting fierce opposition. At Iconium, in central Turkey, the mob was stirred up against them and, after a while, the situation became so dangerous that they fled the city. There was every possibility that they were going to be stoned to death (vv5–6). But I love the fact that, amidst the intensity of the opposition, their message was one of grace. It must have been very tempting for them to turn on the crowd and to deliver a message of judgement and condemnation. But they chose to speak about the grace of the Lord. Grace is a dominant theme in Paul’s ministry. In Ephesians 2:8 he wrote: “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” There is nothing that we can do to gain salvation. It is completely outside our grasp. But, because God is so incredibly generous, he was willing to do for us what we could never do for ourselves and set us free from our sins. And our gracious God goes on being generous to us. In our Christian lives we, sadly, continue to fall far short of perfection. But God continues to love and forgive us, setting us free to live lives of liberty and fulfilment. We Christians have many things that we would like to say to our society but, above everything else, we need to ensure that we are declaring boldly the grace of the Lord. Question How would you explain the grace of God to someone who had never heard about it before? Prayer Gracious God, thank you for your generosity to me. Help me to take every opportunity to tell other people of your amazing grace. Amen