God brings success from apparent failure Message by Dusan Beredi, Novi Sad Christian Fellowship, shared with TEN’s Zoom prayer meeting on 20th May
I will share something that is on my heart. Probably, like me, you have changed most of your schedules in the last few weeks. I was invited to speak in so many places and different conferences. I had many plans in front of me and then everything stopped. I asked God “why?“ When you look in the Bible in Acts 14 we see that when the apostle Paul visited Lystra it seemed like a big failure. This is one of the very interesting chapters in Acts because when Paul and Barnabas first visited the city and healed a man who was lame, the people wanted to worship them, but the apostles refused it. Afterwards, the Jews came and stoned apostle Paul. The whole story is really strange because it was a real failure without any success. Nothing good was happening at that moment. Later, when we come to Acts 16, we find that Paul was again in Lystra and he meets a very interesting young man called Timothy. Timothy has a really good testimony. So, when did he become a Christian? From church history and tradition, we find that Timothy became a Christian when
Paul was in Lystra for the first time. Paul was probably living in his home. Maybe, Timothy became a Christian at that time or shortly afterwards. Why do I mention it? Because everything looked like a failure, but out of that ‘failure’, young Timothy became a follower of Jesus Christ. He was destined to become one of the most important disciples of the apostle Paul and a most important influencer of the early church. Tradition tells us that he became Bishop of Ephesus—a really big man of God.
Everything looked like a failure, but out of that ‘failure’, Timothy became a follower of Jesus Christ. 4
