Wow, have you read todays chapter in Acts 16?   It’s a thrilling roller coaster ride of exciting ministry – full of ups & downs, but where will it end up?

• It starts with everything on track as their ministry is helping the churches to be strengthened if faith and grow in numbers… (This is when we feel good!)
• Then they get a radical vision and immediately obey setting sail to Macedonia… (This is when we feel bold)
• Then they get to where they were sent, sit down to speak with some women, and God opens one’s heart to respond to the message and she gets baptized (Now we KNOW that God is with us!)
• Then they cast a demon out of a slave-girl (This is really exciting ministry!)
• Next thing they know, they are being beaten up and are thrown into jail! (This is when we wonder: God, did I miss it?!)  

Was this the end of the adventure? Did they at this point think that they had missed it? Surely this couldn’t be Gods plan? Maybe that vision Paul had was from eating too much pizza the night before?

I know too many people who have quit in the face of opposition. When the going gets tough, they quit.  

Not Paul. Later he would write of this episode in 2 Corinthians 2:14, saying:

Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.

He turned the opposition into opportunity.

Instead of winging and quitting and being angry at God, Paul & Silas are singing praises at midnight!  It’s a powerful testimony to the other prisoners and suddenly the prison doors miraculously fly open and everyone’s chains fall off and they are all freed. But the freest man that day was the jailer, because “He believed in the Lord Jesus – He and his household.”

Paul al Silas seized the opportunity in the midst of opposition. They trusted God to lead them and use them to spread the knowledge of Christ “in every place,” even in jail – now that’s Spiritual Living!

Whether you are “up” or “down” today, trust God to use “in every place”…