Christianity is a thinking person's religion. Know what you believe & why & be ready to reason with others.
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Acts 17 Summary
Paul presents the gospel of salvation to three distinct groups of people in chapter 17:
Synagogue attending Jews. Some of the were persuaded about the truth of Christ, but most were jealous, and incite a mob to chase Paul out of town.
The Bereans, a more noble group of Jews who received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
Stoic & Epicurean philosophers who would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. They were all ears until Paul started telling them about the resurrection of the dead.
Dig Deeper
Christianity is often derided as a feel-good, emotionally based religion rather than a rational, thinking person's understanding of truth; as if you need to ignore logic & reason if you're going to accept Christ.
This claim is patently false. Look at the way Paul's efforts are described in Acts 17:
In the synagogue, Paul "he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead. (v3)"
The noble Bereans examined the scriptures to judge Paul's truthfulness, therefore many of them believed.
As Paul spoke to the Philosophers in Athens, "he reasoned with them (v17)" and used quotations from Greek philosophers to help make his point (v29).
Unfortunately, too often we've earned the criticism heaped on by the world because so many Christians have been unable to robustly describe what we believe, why we believe it and why the truth of God's Word is superior to the ideas of man.
You have a duty to push back against the ignorance of the world rather than feed into it. Do the hard work of knowing the Bible well and applying it's truth to every aspect of life.
AAA Prayer:
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: In God our Father we live and move and have our being (v28)
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray for the ability to dialog about God in this world where honest dialog about anything is rare.
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
