Acts 16:11-24

11From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. 12From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

13On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. 15When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us.

16Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." 18She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.

19When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. 20They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar 21by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice."
22The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. 23After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

Questions to consider:

• What kind of place is Pilippi? Does this give light to Paul’s strategies here?
• Contrast the various people the apostle encounters in this city.
• Why does Lydia believe Paul’s message?
• Why do the owners of the slave girl oppose Paul? What charges do they bring against Paul
and Silas?
• In looking at this passage, does doing the will of God necessarily exclude trouble? What
might that mean in your own life?

Possibilities for prayer:

One of the things that strikes me about this passage is the way that Luke writes that God “opened” Lydia’s heart to accept Paul’s message. It seems to me that without that little nudge from God, Paul’s words would not have been enough. Let’s think about some of the people in our own lives that we want to see coming into relationship with Jesus. Today, ask God to soften those hearts, to give them that little extra nudge so that Jesus’s truth can settle in.