Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Thank you, Jan, for the Bible reading and good morning to all of you.
[00:00:11] My name is Phil, as you might know, and I'm here to preach, as you might know, the last, I guess, of our Sundays in that sort of interim phase, before our interim pastor starts next week. So it's good to be here. Let's just spend some time in prayer before we begin.
[00:00:35] Our Lord and Father, thank you for what we've just celebrated together in communion as we've been reminded that we now can come into your presence, receive forgiveness, and we can enjoy fellowship with you.
[00:00:49] We pray now as we open your word and look at the scriptures that you will teach us, that your Holy Spirit will guide us, help us to learn more about how we can follow you day by day.
[00:01:03] We pray in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:01:09] I want to just put up this photograph of a friend of ours whose name is Alexis. That's the lady in the middle. She's there with her family, husband Kevin, and their children, Liam and Haven.
[00:01:21] But I'm putting her photograph up because about 12 years ago in 2014, when Jan and I were in Nigeria, Nigeria was just at the beginning of what looked like an Ebola outbreak. I don't know if you remember that. It was quite big news at the time, and it was of great interest to me because I happened to be the director of a mission in Nigeria called sim, and I was responsible not only for the welfare but our missionaries, but also to advise and assist with the national church, which had 6 million members.
[00:01:59] So I was watching closely at what was happening with Ebola because the expert epidemiologists that were in contact with had advised us that although it was running rampant in Liberia and Guinea and Sierra Leone at the time, that would be nothing compared with what would happen if it ever got to Nigeria.
[00:02:24] And it did come to Nigeria through a gentleman whose name was Patrick Sawyer. And he knowingly brought himself a case of Ebola to Nigeria. And the beginning of an outbreak happened, and I was feeling the pressure because not only was I director of the mission, but also as a medically qualified person. I was looked to to give of advice and tell people, you know, what they should be doing. And I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed, as you might imagine. And then God brought this lady into our lives. Her name at that time, she was a single missionary doctor from the US who had been teaching in a family practice or general practice residency training program in the US and she came to begin her service as a missionary doctor. She walked into my office and said, how can I help?
[00:03:19] So I Said, what do you know about Ebola? And she said, well, I know a bit, but I can find out. So she went to work and she came up with all kinds of plans and strategies and protocols and grading systems and found the manuals to use and developed some teaching materials, which was a great encouragement and a relief to me. So when I was thinking about encouragement, I was trying to think of somebody that had been an encouragement to me. And this lady came to mind.
[00:03:50] She and her family now live in South Carolina, and she's moved into a different role there back in the U.S. but for us, for me in particular, she was a great encouragement.
[00:04:03] I wonder if you think back on your lives, on your life.
[00:04:08] Most of us have only had one, haven't we?
[00:04:11] As you think back on your life, have there been people that God has brought into your life as an encouragement to you? If you were to name one or two people, who would you think of? That has been a great encouragement to you.
[00:04:25] Today we're going to talk about Barnabas and we've been subtitled it Son of Encouragement. And we'll have a look at that in a minute. I've got the Acts 11 passage there, although there's actually five or six different passages that we'll be looking at today. Jan has read three of them, but there are others because Barnabas name crops up throughout the New Testament in lots of places. So we're going to try and piece these together into a little bit of a look at his life.
[00:04:52] What do we know about Barnabas?
[00:04:56] Well, if you're on the Facebook group, you would have seen this photograph, which I put up a couple of days ago.
[00:05:04] However, I have to say he probably didn't look like that because we don't know.
[00:05:11] Nobody took a photograph of him on their phone for some reason, so we don't have one. So this is just an artist's impression and it may be right, but it's more likely to be wrong. So we could say this is probably not what he looked like. So what do we know about him apart from the fact that he probably didn't look like that?
[00:05:30] Well, we do know a few things. Firstly, Barnabas was actually not his name.
[00:05:39] That's the first thing we can say. His name was Joseph.
[00:05:44] He was called Barnabas. He's nicknamed Barnabas, but we'll come to that later. His name was Joseph. He was a Levite, which is one of the priestly tribes. He was from Jewish background, but he was also from the land of Cyprus.
[00:06:00] So he was actually from a Greek or from an island or was raised and born and bred in an island that had a lot of Greek culture as well.
[00:06:11] He was probably a teacher of the law in the synagogue. We don't know how he became a Christian. Maybe he'd been in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost and had heard about Jesus. We don't really know, but we know that he was a follower of Jesus.
[00:06:28] What do we know about Cyprus? Well, there's a map there to remind you of where it is located in the Mediterranean off the coast.
[00:06:35] And you notice a couple of other towns there, Jerusalem right down the bottom and Antioch right up the top. Right.
[00:06:42] So we'll be talking about some of those towns later. But Cyprus is the island there where he grew up.
[00:06:50] So there was quite a sizeable Jewish community in the island of Cyprus.
[00:06:58] So as a Jew living in that, in that place, he had a bridge or he was a bridge between those two cultures, the Jewish culture and the Gentile or the Greek culture, which we'll come to in a minute.
[00:07:13] He probably lived around AD 30 in Jerusalem.
[00:07:17] We also know that he was a cousin to Mark, as it tells us in this reference in Colossians chapter four.
[00:07:25] Mark is the cousin of Barnabas. Mark was the writer of Mark's gospel.
[00:07:32] What else do we know about him?
[00:07:34] This verse in Acts 12 tells us that Mary, who was the mother of John, who was also called Mark, owned a house.
[00:07:47] Now in those days, if somebody owned a house, they probably were reasonably wealthy because Mark was also called John, because Mary was John's mother and Mark was Barnabas cousin.
[00:08:05] It means that Mary was Barnabas aunt.
[00:08:09] So I know that's incredibly complicated, but I hope you follow me.
[00:08:16] So maybe Barnabas was quite well off. In other words, he probably came from a fairly well off family.
[00:08:22] What we do know about him from one of the passages that James just read to us, he was a good man. He was full of. And what does a good man mean? He was full of the Holy Spirit and faith and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
[00:08:39] So he was effective in his ministry. And that's an amazing description when you look at it. If people were to talk about you, what would they say about you or about me? Would they say he or she is a good man or a good woman, full of the Holy Spirit and full of faith? That was what he was like.
[00:09:00] We also know from this reference that Paul had written. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that he and Barnabas apparently were two of the Christian workers at the time who worked to support themselves. They weren't supported by others. So he was self supporting.
[00:09:20] That's just a little interesting snippet.
[00:09:23] We also know that he was trustworthy. Jan, read this, this passage to us about how the church in Antioch decided to send the money that they'd raised to help with famine relief to Jerusalem. They decided to send their gift with Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas was obviously trusted, was a trustworthy person.
[00:09:50] We also know that he was generous. This verse, we'll mention this verse several times so it won't be the last time you see it this morning.
[00:09:59] Acts 4, 36, 37 says Joseph or Barnabas sold a field that he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles feet. He owned a block of land, he sold the block of land and brought the money and gave it to the church.
[00:10:16] And we do know that almost certainly he gave it all to the church.
[00:10:20] If you want a little interesting little snippet to remind you, there's a story of Ananias and Sapphira in that same section.
[00:10:30] Things didn't end quite so well for them because, well, you can read the story yourself if you like. We won't get sidetracked on it. But in the case of Barnabas he was trustworthy and he was generous and he made his contribution to the church.
[00:10:47] But in case you think Barnabas was a perfect character, we know that's not true. Because In Galatians chapter 2, the apostle Paul calls him out on hypocrisy and says that he was led astray in this case by Peter and was all to do with refusing to eat with Gentiles because of just for the sake of appearances. And Paul was not happy with Peter's behavior. And he was also not happy that Barnabas was misled by Peter.
[00:11:23] So he wasn't a perfect character. He had his flaws.
[00:11:27] Presumably he was teachable and responded and grew in that area. Because we know that Paul and Barnabas were very close through their lives.
[00:11:38] So that's a little bit of background about what we know about Barnabas.
[00:11:43] Now we want to look at how, in what way was he an encourager?
[00:11:48] And this going back to this verse again tells us that Joseph Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas. Barnabas is an Aramaic word that means son of encouragement. And when that phrase son of means somebody who's characterized by encouragement.
[00:12:06] So Joseph was called Barnabas because he was an encourager.
[00:12:12] And we assume therefore that even at this time, which was early on in the piece, he already had a reputation as an encourager it wasn't something that he developed along the way. So he was known way back then as an encourager.
[00:12:29] How did he encourage people?
[00:12:32] Jan read this passage to us earlier. This is talking about a guy named Saul, okay?
[00:12:39] He'd been, as we know, Saul was a persecutor of the church.
[00:12:45] And when he. Saul, that is, when it says he came to Jerusalem, it's referring to Saul. Saul came to Jerusalem. He tried to join the fellowship.
[00:12:55] And for some reason they were afraid of him, of course, because of his background, what they knew about him, we don't really blame them. They didn't really believe that he was a disciple. He was very suspect. They were suspicious of him.
[00:13:09] But Barnabas took him and he brought him to the apostles. And Barnabas explained everything that had happened to Saul and how he had been on his journey and he'd seen the Lord and the Lord had spoken to him, and then he'd been out in the desert for three years. We know that from other references.
[00:13:30] So Barnabas vouched for him. In other words, he defended him. He explained his background. He encouraged this suspect believer by introducing him to the disciples and convincing him that he was legit.
[00:13:46] And the result is in verse 28, Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.
[00:13:57] So Saul's ministry was kicked off way back then because of Barnabas. So the first thing we know about Barnabas, as he encouraged people, firstly he encouraged a suspect believer.
[00:14:11] But there's more.
[00:14:14] Another passage that Jan read, news of this, and this refers to the fact that Gentiles or Greeks were becoming Christians for the first time in Antioch and some other places. So when that news reached the church in Jerusalem, they thought, who can we send to Antioch to work with these new.
[00:14:40] This new group of people called Gentiles, people from Greek background.
[00:14:46] Well, they knew who to send Barnabas because of his connections, because of his multicultural background. So they sent him to Antioch.
[00:14:56] And when he arrived, he saw what the grace of God had done. He was glad, and he encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. And this is where this reference is that we looked at earlier. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. And a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
[00:15:17] So there he is encouraging new converts. And they were Gentile converts at that, from a new concept. This had never happened before. The previous converts had all been from the Jewish culture.
[00:15:30] Now there was a cross cultural aspect coming in.
[00:15:34] And Barnabas was the one who Kicked that off by discipling those people, encouraging them, teaching them.
[00:15:41] So the second group that Barnabas encouraged were new believers.
[00:15:46] Let's move on.
[00:15:48] As Barnabas was working with these new believers, I reckon he probably was feeling the pressure a little bit. There was a lot to be done, a lot of converts, a lot, A lot of people to train and teach and encourage. He needed help.
[00:16:01] So who did he look to for help?
[00:16:05] Well, he went to find Saul, the same guy that he had vouched for with the church in Jerusalem. Saul was in Tarsus. So he went to Tarsus and he found him and he brought him back to Antioch where he was ministering. So for a whole year, Barnabas and his helper Saul met with the church and they taught great numbers of people.
[00:16:32] And by the way, that was the first time that the word Christian was used to describe disciples of Jesus.
[00:16:42] So Barnabas was right there in the middle of it with Saul helping him.
[00:16:48] So the third is the same guy, of course, Saul. But a third aspect now is that Barnabas is encouraging Saul as a potential leader.
[00:16:58] Originally in the first case we're looking at he was just vouching for him as a legitimate convert.
[00:17:04] But now he could see leadership potential. He deliberately brought Saul to join him in this ministry of encouragement and teaching and nurturing and discipling because he could see what could become of Saul in the future.
[00:17:20] So he was that he was encouraging a potential leader.
[00:17:25] Let's move on. In Acts, chapter 13, there were prophets and teachers and it lists the names of them, including Barnabas and Saul. By then, Saul was listed as one of the leaders.
[00:17:38] While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul for the work of to which I've called them. So after they'd fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and they sent them off. And the two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit went down to Seleucia and they sailed from there to Cyprus.
[00:18:04] When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogue. John was with them as their helper.
[00:18:13] So now this is the first missionary outreach.
[00:18:17] We've already had the first cross cultural growth of the Gospel in Antioch. And now these same people in Antioch have sensed God saying, send these two guys out to take the gospel beyond into regions beyond. And they chose Barnabas and Saul, the same two.
[00:18:39] And they took off and they went. Interestingly, they started in Cyprus, Barnabas home town, the place that he was familiar with or his home area.
[00:18:50] And notice that in verse 5, John was with them. This is the John who was also known as Mark, who was the son of Mary, another Mary, and was also the cousin of Barnabas. So Barnabas took his cousin with him, his cousin Mark.
[00:19:09] So it's interesting over the. We haven't got the whole passage here, but if you look at these few verses from Acts 13, we see an interesting trend. In verse two, it says, Set apart from me, Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas is the leader. He's the one who vouched for Saul. He's the one who brought Saul and introduced him and developed his leadership ability.
[00:19:31] So it's Barnabas and Saul, his protege.
[00:19:35] By verse seven, it's still Barnabas and Saul.
[00:19:39] Now they're appearing before the proconsul Sergius Paulus, hearing the word of God. So they're doing some preaching and teaching Barnabas and his helper Saul.
[00:19:50] And then at some point, Saul is filled with the Holy Spirit and he starts preaching. And you can read the details if you want to. We won't get distracted with it. But Saul is becoming more prominent. So. So by verse 13, this group is described as Paul and his companions. So Saul has had his name changed to Paul and it's now Paul and his companions. You see that trend.
[00:20:18] Barnabas is stepping back.
[00:20:21] He's stepping out of the limelight.
[00:20:24] He could see the potential in Paul or in Saul, who's now Paul, and he's pushing Paul into the limelight to take the leadership.
[00:20:34] And so we see Barnabas encouraging not just a potential leader, but now a leader as a missionary and an apostle to take the lead. And we all know, or presumably we all know or have heard of the things that Paul the apostle did in his missionary journeys and his letters that he's written that we read here in the New Testament.
[00:20:58] All of this because Barnabas encouraged Paul and saw his leadership potential as a missionary and an apostle.
[00:21:08] But we move on.
[00:21:11] Sometime later, Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preach the word of the Lord.
[00:21:22] Just a little comment right at the end in the same verse 13, where I've just been pointing out that it's now Paul who's described as the leader.
[00:21:30] The end of that verse, there's a little comment, John left them and returned to Jerusalem.
[00:21:39] So John, that is Mark, that is Barnabas cousin, he left. We don't quite know why, but we know that he left.
[00:21:47] Okay, so we move on. A couple of chapters later, Paul says to Barnabas. This is not Barnabas saying to Paul, but Paul. Paul, who's now the leader, says to Barnabas, let's go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preach the word of the Lord and we'll see how they're going.
[00:22:04] So Barnabas says, great, let's take my cousin Mark with us.
[00:22:10] Paul says, no, not a good idea.
[00:22:14] He deserted us in Pamphylia and he didn't continue with the work.
[00:22:21] So he's not someone that I want on the team.
[00:22:26] So what does Barnabas do? He could have said no, okay?
[00:22:30] But he didn't.
[00:22:32] He disagreed with them.
[00:22:34] These are two godly leaders actually having a disagreement. Can you believe that?
[00:22:40] Hopefully that in itself is an encouragement to us humans. Even godly leaders can have disagreements.
[00:22:47] Not just a disagreement, but such a sharp disagreement that they split. They parted company.
[00:22:55] Paul and Barnabas were no longer Paul and Barnabas. They were Paul and his team and Barnabas and his team.
[00:23:04] They had such a sharp disagreement that Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, back home.
[00:23:13] And Paul chose Silas. And he left, commended by the believers, to the grace of the Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. And then the rest of the chapter, the rest of the Book of Acts of the Apostles is about what Paul and Silas did. You know, all those stories you've probably heard and if not, go and read them because they're well worth reading. All the things that Paul and Silas did.
[00:23:41] So what was happening here?
[00:23:46] Why did Mark leave earlier on? We don't really know.
[00:23:51] Maybe he was afraid.
[00:23:56] We just don't know what the story was. But we know that it was an issue for Paul.
[00:24:01] Why did Barnabas want to take Mark with him so badly? That it was that he was happy he was willing to split Paul. The partnership between Paul and Barnabas.
[00:24:10] Well, you could be skeptical and say, well, he was his cousin after all. That's just family sticking together.
[00:24:16] That might have been a factor. But what we know of Barnabas life, we know that that's a bit too simplistic. It was more than that. Barnabas probably could see the potential in Mark and decided that it was worth splitting the group for that.
[00:24:34] We don't know much more after this about what happened to Barnabas. You could say that he lost his career. This was the end of his famous career. We don't read a lot more about him.
[00:24:46] There are church traditions about what happened to him and how he met his demise later on which we won't go into.
[00:24:55] But we do know that they sailed for Cyprus. They went on their own ministry, Paul, I mean, Barnabas and Mark.
[00:25:04] And we know because Mark wrote Mark's Gospel that Mark had a significant role to play in the growth of the early church. So there was.
[00:25:15] We had one missionary team which had a sharp disagreement and split in two. And the end result was two missionary teams.
[00:25:23] So you could see that as a win win.
[00:25:26] We had two teams instead of one, and the ministry continued. So somehow God turned that around for good.
[00:25:35] And we also know a bit more. If you read other parts of the New Testament, you realize that Paul's view of Mark did actually change later on.
[00:25:46] In Colossians, he talks about Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, and he says, if you see him, welcome him.
[00:25:57] That doesn't sound like something you'd say about someone that you still were suspicious of or were not happy with.
[00:26:06] In Philemon, Paul says, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow workers. He describes Mark as a fellow worker, as a colleague.
[00:26:18] In 2 Timothy, Paul says this only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you because he's so helpful to me in my ministry.
[00:26:30] Mark has become useful to Paul later on.
[00:26:34] And then Peter in Another letter in 1 Peter, chapter 5, says, she who is in Babylon, which is a reference probably to the church in Rome, they send you her greetings, as does my son Mark. Peter referred to him as my son. Not that he is his son or was his son, but that's how he saw him, as someone who was just like his own son. He had great respect for Mark.
[00:27:03] So Mark really did find his place.
[00:27:06] He was accepted again by Paul and became useful to Paul.
[00:27:11] And of course, he did write Mark's gospel.
[00:27:15] So we owe a lot to Mark.
[00:27:20] And so our fifth group that Barnabas encouraged was someone who was seen as a failure by Paul.
[00:27:27] And we know later on he was no longer a failure.
[00:27:32] So think about what would have happened without Barnabas.
[00:27:36] If we hadn't had Barnabas, what would have happened with Paul or with Saul?
[00:27:41] What would have happened with Mark?
[00:27:44] We don't really know. God is sovereign. If Barnabas wasn't there, he probably could have raised up someone else to do the same thing. We don't know. But we do know that God used Barnabas in a powerful way just with these two men. Not to mention all the other Gentile converts that he discipled in Antioch and who knows how many other people had an influence on.
[00:28:04] But we do know that Barnabas had a profound impact through these two guys on the growth of the church. And on who we are today. Without Barnabas, probably half of our New Testament, we wouldn't have think of it that way.
[00:28:24] So what can we learn from this? How can you and I be encouragers to others?
[00:28:29] What is encouragement?
[00:28:32] Nicky Gumbel puts it this encouragement is not flattery or empty praise.
[00:28:39] It's like verbal sunshine.
[00:28:42] It costs nothing and warms other people's hearts and inspires them with hope and confidence in their faith.
[00:28:53] However, these days, I notice the word encourage has a different meaning. Sometimes someone might come up to you and say, I'd encourage you to consider joining the leadership team, or I'd encourage you to be a little bit less critical of that person, or I'd encourage you to come along and join me in this.
[00:29:14] Sometimes the word encourage we use to mean exhort, or try and convince somebody to do something that they may not want to do.
[00:29:23] But that's not the sort of encouragement that I'm talking about.
[00:29:26] So if I say I want to encourage you, hopefully it's because I want to build you up and I want you to grow and I want to help in any way I can rather than just give you a job that I think you should be doing.
[00:29:40] Encouragement is an important ministry for all of us. Paul says in Romans, I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong.
[00:29:51] That is that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. That was Paul's goal, that all of us would be mutually encouraged. We encourage one another, he says in 1 Thessalonians. Therefore, encourage one another. Build each other up just as you are doing, but do it. Encourage one another. Build one another up.
[00:30:16] In Ephesians, he says, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up or encouraging others.
[00:30:25] Watch what comes out of your mouth.
[00:30:28] When you're going to say something, stop and think, is this wholesome?
[00:30:33] Is what I'm going to say helpful for building others up according to their needs so that it can benefit those that I'm speaking to? Is everything that I say to you or to someone else, is it helpful for building you up? Is it according to your needs?
[00:30:50] Will it benefit those who listen?
[00:30:54] In Hebrews, the writer says, let's consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. That's what we're here to do.
[00:31:02] Let's not give up meeting together as some are doing, but let's encourage one another. That's why we meet together like this, to spur one another on towards love and good deeds to build each other up.
[00:31:15] In Romans 12, Paul says we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is and then he lists a whole lot of different gifts. Then he mentions encouragement. If your gift is to encourage, then give encouragement. And then he goes on to say, if it's giving, then give generously.
[00:31:33] So does it mean that only those who have the gift of encouragement are to encourage and the rest of us maybe have the gift Gift of discouragement hopefully none of us have the gift of discouragement. Although sometimes you wonder, sometimes the things I've said to people could have been interpreted that way.
[00:31:51] We do have an ability to discourage people, but each of us, I think, whether we have a specific gift or not, each of us are called to give. Even if we don't have a specific giving gift, we are still asked to give. Even if in encouragement is not our major contribution, each of us have a role to encourage one another.
[00:32:12] And on that note, this is not a mistake that I've got the wrong slide from the wrong sermon. It's to remind me, and maybe you, that earlier in the year I did present a message here on preparing for persecution that I entitled Sheep Among Wolves from our Matthew series.
[00:32:30] In it I mentioned this guy, his name is Kevin.
[00:32:34] This is a different Kevin to the one that's married to Alexis that I mentioned earlier.
[00:32:38] Just happens to be the way it worked out.
[00:32:41] Kevin Rideout is his name.
[00:32:44] He is an sim.
[00:32:47] The mission that Jan and I work with in Nigeria is sim.
[00:32:51] Kevin was a pilot with sim. He's an American in Niger to the north of Nigeria.
[00:32:57] Nine months ago in October, he was kidnapped outside his house on 21 October.
[00:33:05] Since that time, every Thursday morning at 5.30am Australia time, a group of his colleagues that he worked with in Niger, including missionaries and also some Nigerian colleagues from around the world, have been meeting via Zoom to pray for his release.
[00:33:27] They prayed that the Lord would be his refuge and strength, that God would protect him and provide him with food, water and shelter, and that he would be a light to his captors.
[00:33:39] And then last Thursday morning, the most recent time, they particularly prayed for his wife Christa and their children.
[00:33:46] As now, after nine months of separation, it was weighing heavily on them.
[00:33:53] And yet at the same time, they were grateful to see how God had continued to sustain them and give them his peace.
[00:34:00] So that was Thursday morning, Friday afternoon, we received word that Kevin had been released from captivity after nine months with all those people praying. And it reminded me of a passage in Acts which Jan didn't read about when Peter was released and how the church had been praying for his release.
[00:34:21] Peter's release in the Book of Acts was rather dramatic, you know, with gates that opened by themselves and people, all sorts of things happening. So I don't know the circumstances of Kevin's release. It might have been miraculous and dramatic or it might have been quiet. We don't know the details. What we do know is that God answered that prayer.
[00:34:41] So my hope is that that would encourage you this morning. I'd already put this up in the Facebook group. Some of you knew about it, but. But others, if you remember that it's a reminder that God is in the business of encouraging us, answering our prayers and we can also be praying for one another. How can you be an encourager? Who do you know that?
[00:35:02] I'm not sure if you get exposed to suspect believers like Barnabas did with Saul, new believers, people with leadership potential, people who could have a key role in leading the church, or people who might be seen as failures or high maintenance or however you want to describe them. God has put people into our lives that he's called us to encourage, to build up, to say things that will benefit them for their own good and to disciple them into followers of Jesus.
[00:35:37] So that's my message for this morning. Who can you, who is God asking you to encourage today?
[00:35:43] Let's pray.
[00:35:47] Our Father, we thank youk for the story or the stories of Barnabas in the New Testament and the way in which he became known as a son of encouragement because of his willingness and ability to work with people and see the best in them and see the potential and the good in them and to draw them closer to youo to teach, disciple and encourage to build them up. Help us, Lord, to do the same with one another as we meet together like we are today, for one another's benefit, to build each other up, to encourage one another.
[00:36:20] Thank you too, that as we are about to welcome a new pastor into our midst, help us to be an encourager to him, to build him up, to support him, to pray for Him.
[00:36:34] Thank you for the way you answer prayers. Thank you for the answer to the prayer about Kevin and his release. Thank you that you're a God who answers prayer.
[00:36:43] We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
