Daily Devotional

Strategy Lessons

Acts 18

This last year has been a season of adjustments. Besides Covid mask and social distance restrictions, we faced unhealthy air pollution due to wildfires, excessive heat in the summer summer and bitter cold in the winter. It seems that we are still confronted  daily with questions regarding large and small group meetings inside, outside and online.

Now, as people choose to be (or not be) vaccinated, we are wrestling with what a “Post-Covid New Normal” might look like. Or perhaps there will be no “Post-Covid” and we will face yet another season of adjustment. No surprise! We have always lived  in uncertain times. Our solution is to adapt and do our very best to be ready for anything! This has always been the case for Christ’s Church!    Acts 18 strikes me as a reminder that the Gospel is about reaching what a pastor-friend calls “the least, the last and the lost.” This only can be effectively done by using Spirit-led strategies that take us, like the apostle Paul, from place  to place. Our mandate is not just to gather for discipleship; it is also to scatter for evangelism. All the way, we adapt our methods.      In Acts 18, as Luke recounts Paul's missionary journey to Corinth (for 18 months), Ephesus and beyond, his mind is filled with the testimonies of changed lives that came as a result of Paul’s ever-changing strategies without compromising the never-changing  gospel as he called people to trust in Jesus Christ, who is "the same yesterday, today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8).      Join us in praying for wisdom to do whatever it takes to reach our hurting world that is so very isolated from our Heavenly Father. It’s time for all of all of us to get out of our "holy huddle” and on to the “line of scrimmage.”

Take some time to ponder what that might look like for you in this ever-changing season. May we all imitate Paul’s never-changing strategy—going place to place, as near and as far as possible “...demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the  Christ” (Acts 18:28).

We would love to hear what creative and adaptive ways you are using to reach out to family, neighborhood, school, workplace, city, county, state, nation and our world. Please send us a note so we can join you in specific prayer. Perhaps what you  are doing might encourage many others to get moving. It’s time!
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