Acts 15:36-16:15 - Ministry Frustrations

Anyone who has seen ministry work in practice can identify with this passage. There are arguments, frustrations, and often little apparent fruit. Paul and Silas are frustrated in their first plans and must adapt. They end up going a different way, to a different place than they originally planned.

Paul and Silas saw a vision of a man in Macedonia yet their first convert is a woman. Did that surprise them?

Areas are closed up to them. Why? How does this happen in practice? We can only guess.

After all the controversy about circumcision Paul does circumcise a man. Why? We can guess it is because his mother was Jewish. But this does not completely explain it.

My commentator quotes Bonhoeffer. In ministry we never know whether Jesus is "building up or pulling down".

Missionary work may seem romantic from far off. Read Acts carefully to see that it was not. People did what they felt like was right. They were not wrong but God interceded to correct and change so that what happened was what he wanted. This is what happens in all missionary and ministry work. We can only trust God, despite the fact that things are not as we would have them. Even if we see little results God's ways are not our ways. We go wrong when we start second guessing God.

Bonhoeffer - "It is a great comfort which Christ gives his church. You confess, preach, bear witness to me, and I alone will build when it pleases me. Don not meddle in what is my province.'" This reminds me of our July trip to Israel and then to Kansas City. Things did not go as we expected. We had few ministry opportunities and the ones I had were with people we randomly met in our traveling, not with the people at our destinations. I take encouragement that I can trust God was working in ways I can never understand and perhaps will never understand.