Methods

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

METHODS

Acts 17:1-4

17:1 When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ," he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women.

NIV

Sometimes it takes a little while to get the message across to some people and it takes a bit of reasoning. On the premise of this reasoning was the scriptures which those in the synagogue believed in. Proving Jesus was the Christ from what someone believes in should be a lot more effective then having to reason with someone who does not believe in the scriptures. We also notice that some of the Jews were persuaded, not all. In some of the past examples of Paul proclaiming the message of Christ, we were not told it took him this long or that he was reasoning with them. What we might learn here is that each situation of sharing the gospel message might be different of others. We cannot have a set plan that we must stick to in order to share the message. We have to be able to adapt to the need of each individuals situation for them to understand the truth. Some we might be able to simply ask, “Do you know Jesus?” while others we might have so spend days reasoning with them from the particular translation of the bible they believe is the right one. The point is we cannot be frozen with a formula that we must use each and every time. Of course we are not all called as Paul was to travel around persuading all that he can that Jesus is the Christ. But in some sense we are all called to go into all the world. We each have a world that we are in, a world or circle of influence that we live in, people we associate with on a regular basis. Do we bring them the message in anyway at all? How do we if we are not allowed to by the rules of engagement in which we work? Yet the point is we should be open to various methods of sharing the message.