Two verses. Forty-five words of Scripture. And tucked inside them is the pivot point that drives the rest of the book of Acts. Paul resolved in the Spirit to travel through Macedonia and Achaia, then to Jerusalem, then to Rome. That word “must” carries weight. Rome was the capital of the known world, the city from which all roads radiated. If the gospel could take root there, it could reach everywhere. What Paul didn't know was how he'd get there. He pictured arriving as a free man, pressing on to Spain. He would arrive in chains, after a Caesarean prison and a Mediterranean shipwreck. God's “yes” to your calling doesn't always come in the packaging you expected. Sometimes the destination is exactly right and the journey looks nothing like you hoped.

The sons of Sceva had been watching Paul. They'd seen the miracles, heard the name of Jesus produce results their own incantations couldn't match. So they tried to add Jesus to their formula. “I command you by the Jesus that Paul preaches.” That secondhand wording told the whole story. The demon's response is one of the most memorable lines in Acts: “I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul, but who are you?” Then the demon-possessed man beat all seven of them so badly they ran out of the house naked and bleeding. Word spread across the city. Believers who'd been hedging their bets came forward to confess. They burned scrolls of magic worth fifty thousand pieces of silver, roughly 150 years of wages. Repentance that costs nothing changes nothing. The name of Jesus can't be borrowed. It has to be believed.

Paul did what he'd done in every city. He opened the Scriptures, made his case for Jesus, and invited people to respond. In Ephesus he got three months of synagogue access before resistance hardened. When some began slandering the Way in public, he withdrew the disciples and relocated to the lecture hall of Tyrannus. For two years he taught there during the hottest stretch of the day, after working a full morning making tents. Five hours a day, every day. Luke says all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord. Paul didn't travel to every town. He trained people who did. The seven churches of Revelation were probably planted by people who first heard Paul teach in that borrowed classroom. Consistency is the fertile soil for the miraculous. The gospel has never needed impressive real estate.