This way brings people together to work like Jesus

Every day we're reading, listening to or watching part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

Mission trip! Exciting!!! I love how God has brought together the contrasting personalities of Barnabas, son of encouragement, and Saul/Paul, whose sharpness of intellect and mastery of words as weapons will cut through substantial barriers between where they are and where God wants people to go.

I love how they were alert and obedient to the Sprit’s lead, building worship, prayer and fasting into their everyday lives, and ready to go into incredibly challenging situations.

It’s clear that they were working methodically, like Jesus, to bring news of God’s kingdom to his Jewish people first. I’m struck by how open these people seemed to be in Pisidian Antioch, rolling out the welcome to speak and seeming enthusiastic about Paul’s learned and inspired word about leadership through the ages. I might have put that down as a good preach!

But look at what God did next. This is where the truly revolutionary nature of God’s kingdom gets revealed. He wasn’t interested in people receiving Paul nicely and wishing him well. I think God knew something about the hearts of the people who thought that God was theirs, Paul’s message was theirs (it had lots of their history, for a start), and that the messiah and coming kingdom would just be theirs too. Seeing a crowd of Gentiles eager to receive the word made the Jews “filled with jealousy”, which I take to include a fear of losing something they believe to be theirs. What do you mean, he isn’t just our God?

I love how the power of Jesus then gets revealed through the outpouring and work of the Holy Spirit. It’s saving Gentiles, bringing them into God’s family, and really annoying the Jewish leaders, who had been so nice about Paul’s preaching. “The disciples were filled with joy” – they knew God’s priorities here and took it overall as a win.

And that was just the start of a rocking tour of God bringing miracles around the region, just as if seeing this little body that God had assembled was like seeing Jesus himself.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God makes himself visible and understandable in Jesus, and his Spirit makes Jesus visible and accessible through an empowered, responsive, obedient body of believers. By watching how this worked out with Paul and Barnabas, I can see that God’s priority is not to make religious people feel better as much as it is to reach anyone who might respond to the life-changing news that hope is real, it’s found in Jesus and following him changes everything.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

I’ve got to question my standards for deciding, “Is this going well?” I’m happy when people say nice things about stuff I’ve said. But how do I need to be more attentive to the Spirit’s lead so that he can do much more through the body of believers that I am part of?

Who am I going to share this with?

The people in church that I pray, worship and follow Jesus with. (Maybe we should fast too!)