Lenten Series Week 5- Barnabas and Asking Good Questions
A Barnabas is someone who asks good questions and sometimes that makes all the difference. I was listening to someone recently who was upset about a particular situation. He’d been venting for a while, when I asked, “What do you want?” “What I want is for [coworker]...
Lenten Series Week 4- Barnabas—an Active Listener
Barnabas moved people toward maturity rather than dependence. Instead of simply telling people what to do, he helped people mature in making their own godly decisions. In this way, people grew in responsibility and in leadership. Paul casts a beautiful vision for this...
Lenten Series Week 3- Barnabas for Discipleship
A Barnabas assumes that God has different plans for different people. What one person is supposed to do isn’t necessarily the same as what another person is supposed to do. Barnabas recognized this as he helped establish Paul among the apostles (Acts 9:26-28). We also...
Lenten Series Week 2- The Impact of Coach Barnabas
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). Each person is responsible before God, yet we live in community. In healthy, faith-based relationships, we can honor one another and hold one another accountable. Barnabas did this for Paul and...
Lenten Series Week 1- Who is Barnabas?
Welcome to a six-week series on Barnabas, one of my favorite people in the Bible. During this Lenten season, we can engage together in this devotional series that includes scriptural insights, food for thought, and points of action. Often overlooked but deeply...
My biblical role model
If you could be like any person in the Bible, who would it be? (I’ll let you opt out of the martyrdom part because so many biblical characters met painful ends.) My favorite biblical role model has always been Barnabas. He’s not a spotlight kind of guy, but he made a...
The Practices of a Barnabas
I talk about Barnabas a lot. He’s one of my favorite biblical characters… probably because he functions as a behind-the-scenes coach empowering others. I heard a talk that Bubba Justice gave on the practices of a Barnabas, taken from his study of the book of Acts....