Joy in the City

Read the scene carefully and it should stop you cold. A great man of God has just been murdered. Stephen — who fed the poor and the widows, through whom God worked mighty miracles — is dead. Devout men have carried him to his burial with great lamentation. And Saul, standing there consenting to the killing, now makes havoc of the church, entering house after house, dragging off men and women and committing them to prison.

So the believers are hunted from their homes and businesses and families and scattered across Judea and Samaria. This is a community in the deepest mourning. And watch what such a community does.

Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. … For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed; and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed. And there was great joy in that city.

Acts 8:4–8 (NKJV)

Do not miss the miracle behind the miracle. That same grieving, weeping, scattered community is the one that ended up bringing great joy to a city. The people who had lost everything became the people who gave a whole city its joy. Their sorrow did not disqualify them from the assignment; it was the very soil the assignment grew out of.

What is salvation actually for?

That should force us to redefine what we think salvation is even for. Somewhere along the way, a Western, Americanized version of Christianity reduced the gospel to a means of securing our own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. But hear me plainly — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is not in the Bible. It is a beautiful line from the philosophers of the Enlightenment, and I have nothing against them. I am simply saying we cannot shrink the gospel down to a set of Western ideals. Look again at the people in this story:

• Life was taken from them — Stephen was killed.
• Liberty was taken from them — they lost their homes, businesses, friends, and family, and many were thrown into prison.
• Happiness was nowhere near them — they were grieving, weeping, and suffering.

And yet no honest reader can deny that what these people did is the very heart of what Christianity is: they brought joy to a city. So the goal of your salvation was never merely your own comfort.

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Matthew 16:24–25 (NKJV)

The reason God saves you is so that, through you, this world can be saved. God is on a mission to rescue this world; He is the Savior of the world. Even the book of Revelation, for all its thunder and its judgments, ends with the salvation of this world. That is where the whole story is headed. So say it over yourself: I exist, and I am saved, to bring life and freedom and happiness to the world in which I live.

Yes, it may cost you your own life, your own freedom, your own happiness for a season. That is not a detour from the plan; it is the plan. But in the end you gain back more than you ever surrendered — you gain your life, you come to know true freedom, and you experience real and lasting joy.

This is why our own ministry has taken as its vision a single, costly sentence: we must have revival, cost what it may. That is not a slogan. It is a decision to bring divine solutions to human problems even when it is expensive to us.

It was never really the miracles

Now, it is easy to assume the joy came because Philip performed signs and wonders. It did not. Here is the proof: that city had already seen a miracle worker. Before Philip ever arrived, a man named Simon had astonished all of Samaria with his sorcery for a long time, claiming to be someone great, and the whole city, from the least to the greatest, said of him, “This man is the great power of God.” By our language today, Simon looked like a mighty man of God. A prophet. An apostle.

Notice how far it went. When Philip preached, even Simon himself believed and was baptized, and he stayed close to Philip, amazed at the real miracles and signs he now saw. But then the apostles at Jerusalem sent Peter and John down, because the people had been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus yet the Holy Spirit had not fallen on any of them. When Peter and John laid hands on them, they received the Holy Spirit. And the moment Simon saw that this power came through the laying on of hands, his heart showed itself — he offered the apostles money to buy it.

Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money! You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God.

Acts 8:20–21 (NKJV)

Peter went further still, telling him he was poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity, and calling him to repent. And that exposes the whole difference. Whatever Simon had been handing the people, he had charged them dearly for it. Nothing was free. His gods demanded payment, sacrifice, and rigid rules. Simon practiced and preached that the gifts of God had to be paid for — with money, first fruits, tithes, offerings, fastings, and endless sacrifice to the man of God.

That is the counterfeit, and it can astonish a city for years without ever bringing it joy. So what did the disciples of Jesus do so differently that a mourning city became a joyful one?

We do not win souls — we preach the gospel

Let me scatter another table. You will not find one passage in the New Testament that tells us to go and “win souls.” Ask ten people what evangelism is, and nine will say, “winning souls for Jesus.” But go and study it for yourself. It is Jesus who wins souls. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. It is God who saves. Our assignment is smaller and simpler than we made it: preach the gospel, and leave the winning of the soul to God, to Jesus, and to the Holy Spirit.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

Romans 1:16 (NKJV)

It pleased God, in His wisdom, to save those who believe through what looks to the world like the foolishness of a message preached. The Jews want a sign and the Greeks want clever wisdom, but we simply preach Christ crucified.

but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

1 Corinthians 1:23–24 (NKJV)

And notice the wording back in Samaria. As they were scattered, they preached the word — not a word, not many words, but the word. They carried one message. Today we have splintered it into a prosperity gospel, a holiness gospel, a healing gospel, as if each were a different product on a shelf. But trace it through the chapter and the one message holds together: Philip preached Christ; he preached the kingdom of God; he preached the name of Jesus Christ; and Luke sums it all up as preaching the gospel. Christ, the kingdom, and His name — that was the whole of it.

How the kingdom actually comes to a city

When Jesus first sent the twelve out, He gave them a pattern we can still follow. It begins not with our effort but with power we do not manufacture ourselves.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Acts 1:8 (NKJV)

So the first move is to receive power, which simply means we stop relying on ourselves and start relying on God. The second move is to go to the people God has actually sent us to — our own lost sheep. Jesus even told the twelve where not to go at that stage; the assignment was specific. So ask honestly: who are the people God has separated me to reach, and who are they not?

The third move is to announce something as you go.

And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

Matthew 10:7–8 (NKJV)

Hear what the announcement actually is: the kingdom of God has come near to you. God has already made the first move. He has come to save you, to heal you, to rescue you, to forgive you all your sins in Jesus. Too often what we preach is the opposite — we tell people they must make the first move toward God. But the good news is that God moved first.

The fourth move is to demonstrate that first move by freely healing, feeding, and making people whole. Freely you have received; freely give. This is precisely where the disciples parted ways with Simon. He charged for everything; they gave everything away. And it is exactly why, down through the centuries, Christians built the hospitals, the schools, and the orphanages, and cared for the weak of the world. Then comes the fifth move, and it is the gentlest: let people respond on their own. Do not force them. Do not coerce them. A gift that has to be extracted is no gift at all.

So here is the whole thing brought home. The reason God saved you is so that this world can be saved through you. You exist to bring joy to your world — to your street, your home, your place of work, your community. It may cost you something; the cross always does. But it is precisely in bringing joy to your city that you finally come to know real joy, real freedom, and real life yourself. Go and be the reason there is great joy in your city.