Acts 14:15 “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.”

Following on yesterday’s reading, this is another example of contextual evangelism. You could hardly imagine more contrasting circumstances! If Paul and Barnabas had been humanly motivated they could have played along with the crowd, getting a lot of physical benefit from it. However, they were completely sincere, motivated by the Holy Spirit, and it brought them a lot of trouble. When Paul recognized a divine appointment and healed  a crippled man (verses 9-10) he had no idea what would happen next! It led to Paul’s being stoned, to the point of a near-death experience. The experience itself, reported in 2 Corinthians 12, was doubtless an incredible blessing, but being stoned to the point of death is something no one would choose! This is again a story of cross-cultural evangelism. The people of Lystra were total heathens, worshiping the Greek pantheon and knowing nothing of the Torah. It would have been easier for Paul and Barnabas to skip over them, but they recognized that God loved those people too, and so felt compelled to share the Gospel with them. This verse certainly illustrates the difficulty of that! They were scattering seed on totally unprepared soil, (Matthew 13) hoping that at least something would happen. I would think that the man who was healed did eventually become a true believer, but we have no clear record of that. There was enough of an uproar that I would imagine the soil was broken up somewhat, but the point is, Paul and Barnabas were faithful to do as God led them, and leave the results up to Him.

I find a lot of empathy with this story. I’ve never been stoned, either with rocks or with drugs, but I certainly know the feeling of scattering the seed of the Word on unprepared soil! We mark 40 years this month of ministry in Omura using the name, Shinsei no Sato, on top of about 2½ years before that of officially being deno­minational. (Incidentally, the church name means, “Home of New Life.”) I could hardly say the harvest has been abundant, but some of it has been very real, and I can say with certainty that there are people who are spiritually alive today who would not have been apart from our having ministered. Japan has long been called “a graveyard of missionaries,” because of the very poor response to the Gospel, but that clouds the fact that there are very vibrant Japanese believers, and God isn’t through with this nation. I am never to give up, but keep working on the soil, scattering seed and watering it, so that God may provide the harvest.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for what I was able to do in our vegetable garden yesterday, that illustrates this very point. I got a row of beets planted, and the soil looks to be in better condition than it has all the years I’ve been trying to grow stuff there. I do ask for a good harvest of beets, but far more than that, I ask for a great harvest of souls, not just in Omura but across the nation for all of Your workers, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!