Will You Be a Barnabas?

When I gave my life to Christ during a meeting on my high school campus, I didn’t know any Christians. I was starting to hang out with my old friends again when a guy named Mark walked up to me one day and introduced himself. He said, “I saw you go forward at the meeting the other day, and I’m going to take you to church.”

“I don’t really want to go to church,” I said.

But Mark wouldn’t let me off the hook. He took me to church, and he took me under his wing. He introduced me to his parents, who also were Christians and helped me become familiar with the Bible. I needed someone like that to help me out.

That is what we need to do with new believers, because the greatest danger new believers face after making a commitment to Christ is falling through the cracks and going back to their old friends and to their old ways. They need a brother or a sister in the Lord.

Saul had someone like that in the form of an unsung hero named Barnabas. When Saul returned to Jerusalem after his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, the apostles didn’t believe he was converted. But in Acts 9 we read, “Then Barnabas brought him to the apostles and told them how Saul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus and how the Lord had spoken to Saul. He also told them that Saul had preached boldly in the name of Jesus in Damascus” (verse 27). Barnabas put it on the line and backed up Saul’s story.

Everyone wants to be an apostle Paul, but who will be a Barnabas? God has a place for every one of us to be used for His glory.