Daily Office Thoughts: 07/10/17
Who Jesus Believes Us To Be
“Then Barnabas brought Saul to the apostles and told them the story about how Saul saw the Lord on the way and that the Lord had spoken to Saul. He also told them about the confidence with which Saul had preached in the name of Jesus in Damascus.” Acts of the Apostles 9:27
Paul had difficulty putting the past behind him. After he had made a name for himself by trying to destroy the church, now that he wanted to grow it he found little acceptance, at first.
Such was true when he visited Jerusalem. And were it not for Barnabas’ willingness to vouch for him, his days as an apostle may have been short.
Barnabas had Paul’s back. He believed in him when no one else did and was willing to stand up for him, regardless of what that might have meant for his standing as an apostle.
Like Ananias before, he knew Paul’s past but he had also seen the change in his life. How he had not only come to know the Lord in dramatic fashion, but had also made Jesus known with dynamic conviction.
The lesson of Barnabas is to remember those people who have stood up to either defend or take a chance on you, and to be such a person in return. I can tell you that taking chances on people doesn’t always work out. I’ve been burnt before, believe me. But I still choose to believe that a person can change.
In my ministry I encounter a lot of people with pasts that they have difficulty moving beyond. They carry with them a felony charge, for which they have served their time. Or an addiction for which they had sought help. And yet people still see them as the felon and the addict they once knew, nothing more. As a result I’ve seen people go back to jail or back to using.
I would rather take a chance on a person’s potential than discount them because of their past. Because that’s what Jesus did for us. He didn’t come to condemn us because of the wrongs we had done, sins we had already committed. He came to save us because he believed in our potential.
Like Barnabas, though in greater fashion, Jesus stood up for us as if to say, “I know everything they’ve done yet I believe in them.”
Let us be the people that Jesus believes we can be, not that the world thinks we are or that we allow ourselves to think we only ever be.
