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Introduction

Alrrriigghhttyyyy
Lovely wonderful Sunday to every single steemian in the universe. As at the time this post was composed that is 11/03/2018, 10:50am, i am in my bed receiving inspiration from the Holy Spirit on some lessons that one can find in the beginning of the second missionary journey of the apostle paul.
Now this is Paul second continental touf around europe all because of the gospel of Jesus.

The Second Missionary tour

In the beginning of Acts 16 we are introduced to Timothy one of Paul's obedient disciples. The first accounts given about him show his love and total devotion to God.
And then immediately after this we follow Paul through some part of the tour. After visiting certain cities and giving them the guidelines the Jerusalem Christian council had just come up with, areas such as Phrygia and Galatia, they then plan to move into the unexplored areas such as Asia but then something interesting happens to them. Acts 16:7-8 says "Their plan was to turn west into Asia province, but the Holy Spirit blocked that route. So they went to Mysia and tried to go north to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn't let them go there either." (msg)
Now this is a very interesting turn of events to take place. These men wanted nothing other than to preach the gospel to the virgin lands of Asia and Bithynia, but as you saw earlier the Spirit of God would not allow them do this. Now I'm going to explain the lessons one can get from this scenario later but follow me again as we go through some other interesting events that took place in this chapter. Now after the Asia incident, the Apostle Paul had a dream in the very next verse and something was said there that I also found very very interesting. Acts 16:9-10 says "That night Paul had a dream: A Macedonian stood on the far shore and called across the sea, Come over to Macedonia and help us! The dream gave Paul his map. We went to work at once getting things ready to cross over to Macedonia. All the pieces had come together. We knew now for sure that God had called us to preach the good news to the Europeans."(msg) The rest of the chapter talks about how Paul and Silas meet up with Lydia and the events that lead to the earthquake in the jail. But today I will be focusing on these lessons that took place.

Lesson

God's will and direction often differs from ours: You see in the first quote in the post, we can see that the disciples had really really good intentions. They wanted to take the message of the gospel to the Asian parts but at the end of the day, God stopped them.. The Bible said ".......but the Holy Spirit blocked that route". You know the funny thing is that they knew it was the spirit that purposely blocked their route and he didn't give them an immediate reason.
The lesson to be learnt here is that must times the actions and deeds of God may seem unreasonable and wrong. We think with our human wisdom that we can understand and make better decisions that what God has in mind but here, we are wrong. When we try to understand God's ways sometimes we end up with more questions than answers and we end up harbouring doubt and not faith.. In our relationship with God we must learn to trust and obey him and following his plan and purpose and most importantly. Hearing and knowing his voice. In verse 9 & 10 of that scripture the reason why God blocked their way was revealed. He want Paul and the others to go to a certain town called Macedonia and if they had travelled to Asia, the people of Macedonia would have been unattended to.
From this we can see that God always has a plan. Even though it may not add up at times we always need to realise that no matter what it is we go through, God is working it all out for our good ultimately. He is a loving father who knows how to give good gifts to his children. I hope this has blessed you as it has blessed me. Have a wonderful day ahead.