Bible in a Year Series - Day #330 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to join along at any time.
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Acts 17 & 18:1-18.
We now find ourselves quickly moving through Paul's second missionary journey. My head is spinning at our pace, and we are going to find ourselves also in a number of Paul's letters as we continue Luke's chronology in Acts.
The picture above is a modern-day peek at Areopagus (Mars Hill). It looks nothing like I would have pictured it, and certainly nothing like we find from the imaginations of history's painters (left).
As I was reading through Paul's Mars Hill address to the Corinthians, I found myself wondering what Paul might say if he were to address the people of Sedona, Arizona.
We are visiting Sedona, Arizona for our The Roaming Boomers™ online travel magazine in a few days, and this area is a hotbed for New Age mysticism.
I then recalled Peter's instruction to be ready to give a defense for our faith, "always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15), and find Paul to be an excellent example to us.
Paul quotes contemporary poets who point to a belief in a God, "for we are indeed his offspring", and then drives their thinking down a different path containing the truth of the gospel and away from their contemporary belief in idols.
The relationship between a man's testimony and the miracle of God's regeneration remains a mystery to me, but it is certainly clear that apologetics is one of the arrows in Paul's quiver.
Therefore, the question of the day is this: am I (are you) perpared to share what Messiah called 'the way, the truth, and the light"? Can we make a reasonable defense of our faith, with gentleness and respect, to those who might inquire?
