Acts 18:1-4 “After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There (in Corinth) he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.”

We could forgive the Apostle Paul if he didn’t feel like talking about Jesus anymore. A Christian pastor once observed: “Where the Apostle Paul went, they started a riot. Where I go, they serve tea.” Paul was on tour in Macedonia and Greece–the first Christian mission work in Europe. He came to Philippi, where they beat him severely and threw him in jail. He went on to Thessalonika. After three weeks, the people who didn’t like his message started a riot, and he had to sneak out of the city in the middle of the night. He went to Berea, and the same thing happened there. He went on to Athens, where they mocked him as a babbler and sneered at the idea that God raises the dead.

“After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth,” Luke tells us. You could forgive Paul if he was getting discouraged. You know how negative reinforcement works. Scientists manipulate a lab animal’s behavior by giving it a shock every time it does something they don’t want it to do. In short order it learns to stop that behavior. Every time Paul opened his mouth about Jesus, he got his little “shock” from the local citizens. If he just kept quiet about Jesus, maybe they would let him stay a little while.

What made coming to Corinth harder was that Paul came alone. He had to leave his traveling companions behind in Berea, a couple of stops back. He had no support network around him as he entered this new city–all the more reason to keep his mouth shut and not risk more rejection.

At various points along the way we have had the sense that we are on our own. We are going it alone. We don’t have our comfortable support network around us. That throws a wet blanket on our desire to speak about our faith. Maybe we feel it in the transition between schools: from grade school to high school, from high school to college. Maybe it has come when we relocated for a job. Maybe someone we love and lean on passes away, or maybe some family relationship or friendship comes unglued and falls apart. Alone, or at least feeling that way, we don’t want to stick out and look different. We don’t want people to think we are weird, or worse, bad. We are tempted to keep Jesus to ourselves. We shut our mouths. We become Christian cowards.

But we are never really alone. “There (in Corinth) he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.” What a coincidence! Paul was a Jew. So were Aquila and his wife. Paul was new to Corinth. So were they. Paul was a tentmaker just like they were. God had prepared this new support group for Paul to encourage him to keep on speaking in the synagogue, trying to persuade the people there to believe in Jesus.

I can’t say that God has specifically promised to support us in exactly the same way. But he wants us to keep on speaking. If we look carefully, we will probably find that we aren’t all alone wherever he has placed us.

 During my seminary years I did cross-cultural mission work in the inner city of Milwaukee. The atmosphere and culture of these neighborhoods was new to me. I’m Anglo. They were mostly African-American. I grew up in relatively safe suburbs. These were high crime areas of the inner city. I had a very middle-class existence. The people I was trying to reach mostly belonged to the underclass: poverty and hunger were the norm for their lives.

Yet at the corner of North Avenue and 26^th St. stood a little grocery owned by a man who shared my faith and supported my work. He could introduce me to people. He provided an office above his store as a base for my work. He understood the culture better than I did. I wasn’t alone. God had others there. He wanted me to keep on speaking. He wants to support you on your mission of Christian witness where he has placed, you, too.