The “Macedonian Call” of Acts 16:9 has stirred many missionaries toward ministry on a foreign field. Countless cross-cultural servants have pled with their generation to “come over . . . and help us.” The vision God gave to Paul that night in Troas so many centuries ago continues to bear fruit to this day.
During the last several years, the Lord has ministered deeply to my heart from the verses preceding the Macedonian Call. Acts 16:6 reveals that the Holy Spirit forbade Paul from going to the province of Asia. Verse 7 notes that the team was “trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them” (Note: All Scripture citations are taken from the NASB 1995.).
I admit that, at first glance, verses 6 and 7 don’t seem like the kind of passage you put on your kitchen wall. Paul attempted to go into Asia, but God didn’t let him. He then tried Bithynia, but God stopped that too—not the kind of pithy phrases you find framed at Christian bookstores. But in context, the “forbidding” and “not permitting” of the Holy Spirit were the means God used to get Paul to Troas, where he received the vision and launched across the sea to the fruitful ministries of his second missionary journey.
Think about the magnificent ramifications of these two prohibitions. Soon after crossing the sea from Troas, Paul encountered a group of women gathered by the river in Philippi, and the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to respond to the Gospel. In that same city, a jailer cried out “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), and he and his family came to Christ. In addition to these in Philippi, on Paul’s second missionary journey we meet our brothers and sisters named Jason (in Thessalonica), Dionysius and Damaris (in Athens), and Aquila, Priscilla, and Crispus (in Corinth). There are also “many” unnamed who believe. On this journey, God used Paul to establish churches in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. Those churches later received five letters from the Apostle, letters inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved for us in the New Testament until today.
These are significant, glorious consequences of the Holy Spirit’s prohibitions for Paul’s desired ministry travel. These were God's “yes” when He said “no” to Paul’s own plan. Almost 2000 years later, we are still benefitting from the frustration of Paul’s ministry plan. We go to the book of Philippians and find great joy in Christ. We learn much pastoral theology, eschatology, and ecclesiology from the letters to the Thessalonians and Corinthians. These books are God’s tools to teach, reprove, correct, and train in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16), to sanctify us and make us like Christ. Remember: They are the long-lasting fruit of frustrated plans.
The Scripture does not record Paul's emotional response to these two divine roadblocks in Acts 16. But we can easily imagine what ours would be: sadness, anxiety, perhaps depression, anger, frustration, and maybe even resignation and apathy.
I exhort you to seek God’s grace and recall that His “no” in answer to something is a “yes” to something else. Often (though not often enough!), when my plans are frustrated and things don’t go as I mapped out, I think about that riverside in Philippi and wonder if there is a Lydia or a Philippian jailer to whom God is leading me. Maybe God’s “yes” is a Crispus or a Jason, someone whom I would never have met unless God had said “no” to my own well-intentioned plan. May the Lord help us all to think like this every day!
Or perhaps there is a place such as Philippi or Thessalonica or Berea or Athens or Corinth—a neighborhood, a village, or a city where God intends to shine the light of the Gospel. You have planned out your life and attempted to move forward, but God has providentially stopped you. Your goals have failed. Your plans have not panned out. Perhaps His “yes” to you is reflected in Mary Brown’s words:
There’s surely somewhere a lowly place
In earth’s harvest fields so wide,
Where I may labor thro' life’s short day
For Jesus, the Crucified.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit has said “no” to Asia and “no” to Bithynia to get you to that place where you can labor in the cause of Christ for these few, short years on earth.
When I think of Acts 16:6–7, I find many reasons to trust the Lord of the Harvest to manage His laborers without fail. I find motivation to look for the opportunities that He Himself is placing before me, even by means of divine roadblocks. I find great cause for joy, because the Head of the Church is faithfully fulfilling His promise to build that Church. His “no” does not hinder the growth of His kingdom but rather advances it beyond what we could have imagined. What a wonderful, sovereign, glorious Lord! Trust Him. Serve Him. Rejoice in Him.
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