Your City is Full of People that Would Like to Talk about Jesus
8 Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. 9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” 11 And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
Acts 18:8–11 ESV Read More
There is a method of missions where you go into a new culture and seek out an influential person to become one of the first believers. Paul didn’t necessarily do that, but that is one way it worked out in Corinth. Crispus, who was the ruler of the synagogue, became one of the first believers. His entire household, which would have been his wife and servants for sure, and then probably some children and in-laws, also believed. It’s interesting that it doesn’t say he quit his job or had to leave. It could be that God kept him in that position for the specific purpose of him influencing others at the synagogue to follow Jesus.
I had a professor that was a missionary in some super-difficult area of Northern Africa. He had to be very careful about who he talked to about Jesus to avoid persecution. One day, a man came to him for healing prayer and after the course of about 30 days of hearing “sometimes Jesus heals slowly,” the man was healed of his life-long sickness. The great joke of God in this is that the man that was healed was a local witch-doctor type that many people went to for healing. From then on, if the witch-doctor couldn’t heal somebody, he’d say, “We need to take you to be healed by Jesus!” and he would introduce them to the missionary. They would come for daily healing prayer and to hear about Jesus the Powerful.
Jesus loves all people made in His image and wants all of them to be saved. Sometimes we talk ourselves out of someone else coming to faith. Paul needed encouragement too. When God told him “do not be silent” and “I have many in this city that are my people” what a boost that must have been! In the United States there are tons of Christians and churches all over the place. We have no lack of people with a smidgen of information about the church. We can talk reasonably and politely with a lot of people about Jesus before we would get run out of town.
Imagine you woke up today and read God’s message to you to “Go on speaking and don’t be silent. I have a lot of people in this town.” Well now you have, because it’s true. Go for it.
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