Unstoppable! 'Skip Points of Grace' — Acts 19:8-10

Some of my earliest Bible lessons on Acts involved studying the four missionary journeys of the apostle Paul. While I still believe these journeys are significant, Luke seems to emphasize an additional perspective. My dad introduced this idea to me when he taught me to skip smooth rocks across the surface a pond. Each place the rock skipped off the water left concentric circles of ripples spreading out from that skip point. On a large pond, a skipped rock would have four or five skip points. In thirty or forty seconds, the ripples would collide as they covered the whole pond. For Luke, the skip points from which grace spread were four major cities: Jerusalem, Antioch of Syria, Ephesus, and Rome. Jesus gave his disciples the skip-point principle in Act 1:8 — the message begins where we are, ripples out to those near, and ultimately reaches those who are far away. We have seen this spreading happen from Jerusalem and Antioch in our journey thus far through Acts. Now, we see it happening from Ephesus. The result of Paul's teaching there was "that people throughout the province of Asia — both Jews and Greeks — heard the word of the Lord." Are our congregation and our city of believers following the example of these skip points of grace?