Finding Your People: You Were Never Meant to Walk Alone

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Finding Your People: You Were Never Meant to Walk Alone What Acts 28:15 and an ancient Roman road show us about the gift of community There's a moment on the Via Appia, the ancient road Paul walked into Rome, that most of us read right past in Acts 28. Once you see it, it changes how you think about Christian community and what it means to find your people. Last week we went down into the dark of the Mamertine, where Paul wrote his final words. This week we come back up out of the city and onto the road. In this episode 00:00 Welcome and the Rome bonus series 02:20 Walking the road the story happened on 04:40 Acts 28:15 and the believers who walked out to meet Paul 06:56 What "took courage" really means 08:20 A moment on the road: "Welcome, I've been waiting for you" 10:55 The family you didn't know you were missing 13:16 You were never meant to walk alone, and a prayer 15:41 Come walk this road with us 16:48 Next week: the underground church The Via Appia, the Appian Way, was built in 312 BC by the Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus. It was the first great Roman highway and the road into Rome from the south, and it helped inspire the saying that all roads lead to Rome. Long stretches are still walkable today on the original black basalt paving stones, laid down more than three hundred years before Jesus was born. When our groups walk it, we're not walking near where the story happened. We're walking the road the story happened on. By the time Paul reaches this road, he has survived a shipwreck, months of hardship, and a long imprisonment, and he is arriving in Rome as a prisoner in chains. He had written to the church in Rome years earlier and told them he longed to see them, but he had never been there and had never met most of them face to face. He is worn down by the very call that put him on this road. Believers from Rome walked out to meet him, some as far as forty-three miles from the city. And from there the brothers and sisters, when they heard about us, came as far as the Market of Appius and the Three