Something Good from Something Bad

You may remember the story of Stephen in Acts 6 & 7. Stephen preached the good news of Jesus Christ to the Jews and they stoned him in return. That act led to a great persecution of the young church "...and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria." (Acts 8:1)

Sounds pretty bad, and it was. These people had to flee for their lives. Later, Saul went after them and actually had some of them put to death. But I noticed something as I was reading through the section today that gave me hope:

Acts 11:19 "Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists ... and a great number who believed turned to the Lord."

You know, sometimes I think God likes to shake us up to get us going. Here these people were running from evil but in fact they were going in exactly the direction God wanted them to go. Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel in the whole world. To make that happen God had to scoot them out of the nest. Sometimes He does that to us too. Don't think that just because something bad has happened doesn't mean God isn't at work.

By the way, the word "Christian" was first coined at Antioch, thanks in part to those who ran from Jerusalem. And one more thing: there was at Antioch that same man they fled from: Saul, now called Paul. And at Antioch was where the Lord called Paul to go out and preach the gospel to the gentiles.

What good came from something so bad.

Pastor Tom