Jesus said "And from the days of John the Baptist until the present time, the kingdom of heaven has endured violent assault, and violent men seize it by force as a precious prize--a share in the heavenly kingdom is sought with most ardent zeal and intense exertion."

When we advance God's kingdom and encounter resistance, we sometimes are suprised or confused and back down. We need to understand that it is a war we are in. And God has a clear strategy for this war. A simple but extremely effective strategy.

We establish bases and then attack from those bases. I'm not talking about physical attacks - even the bible says "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world". God's kingdom is advanced by preaching the good news, seeing people saved and added to the church, seeing those people grow as Christians, healed, set free and become leaders in advancing God's kingdom.

The bases are churches. We see a great base established in Antioch. Paul and Barnabas were sent out from that base and established churches all over modern day Turkey. Paul goes back and then moves into Europe. First Macedonia and then eventually Greece. He establishes a base in Corinth and then a few years later moves back to Asia to establish a base in Ephesus.

From Ephesus, they plant churches all over the west of modern day Turkey. A truly remarkable time.

Today God's plan is still the same. Establish a church and then move out from that church to help establish others. As Christians we are all part of this process. If we see church as just a nice place to go on a Sunday, we've totally missed the point. God wants to rescue people, heal them, restore them and give them a hope and a future and he does it through the church. The best possible way to impact a city, a town or a region for God's kingdom is by establishing a church in that region.