Early Life of Paul – Escapes | Story

 

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Have you ever got in trouble?

Today’s story is about Paul. I wonder if you know anything about Paul. He was a great teacher in the early church, he wrote lots of the words in our bibles, and he helped the message of Christianity spread across the world. Paul was very good at getting into trouble.

Paul met Jesus while travelling to Damascus, he was supposed to be arresting the Christians there, but he joined them. Soon the people who had sent him to Damascus found out and decided to send people to arrest Paul. When the men arrived at the city Paul was trapped. “Follow me” said one the Christians and lead Paul to a house right by the city wall. Then he put Paul in a big basket, tied a long rope around it, and lowered him out the window. Paul has escaped, but he knew God wanted him to keep tell people about Jesus, so he would do just that.


Paul often travelled with friends. He was with a friend when they went into a town and saw a man who was lame. Paul knew the man had faith so he decided he would ask God to heal him. Quietly Paul prayed and then shouted out “Stand up on your feet”. The crowd went wild with excitement, the man was healed. The crowd thought Paul and his friends must be God’s and started to bring them gifts. Paul tried to say they weren’t gods, only serving God, but the people wouldn’t listen. There was so much noise some Jews came to see what was happening. they had heard of Paul and started to throw rocks at him. Paul was trapped. “stay still, don’t move” said his friend. Paul stopped moving, he hurt a lot from the places he had been hit but he didn’t make any sound. The rocks stopped falling, the people saw they were not moving and thought they were dead. Slowly everyone left. Paul and his friend crawled away slowly, they had escaped.

But Paul continued to get into trouble telling people about Jesus. He was put into jail with another friend called Silas. They were chained to the wall all night. At midnight Paul and his friend were singing, they realised that when they got into trouble, God would look after them. They were so sure this would happen they were singing happy songs. suddenly the earth shook and the chains broke off, the doors of the prison opened. Paul and Silas laughed, they knew God had saved them again. Outside the prison officer was panicking, he thought he would be in big trouble for losing the prisoners. He walked in the open doors of the prison and shouted “hello, anyone still here?”. “We are all here” called Paul. The prison officer was surprised and very thankful. He took Paul and Silas to his house and asked if he could join their church!

Paul got into lots of trouble, but God has a job for him to do and he knew that if he was in trouble because of that job then God would take care of him.