Although I was raised in a church going family, my faith
didn’t really come alive until I was 25 and serving in the Army. The turning point for me was discovering the joy of meeting the Lord in a real and personal way through reading the bible, but I am also indebted to those who nurtured and encouraged me in my Christian faith. I owe much to my father’s simple yet profound faith and to my Godfather Richard who was a Reader in the Church of England, but the time my faith came alive as a soldier it
was my Chaplain, Padre Graham Hadfield in Herford Garrison and the local SASRA Scripture Derek Brookes in Bielefeld who had the biggest influence on me. I shall never forget the first time I went to Graham’s Wednesday night bible study. I knocked with a mixture of trepidation and excitement on the side door of the Church Hall in Hammersmith Barracks, Herford and as I entered I was enveloped by a
feeling of love and acceptance.
All of us will have had notable influences in our Christian journeys. Some of these may have been significant life events, but a great many of us will have encountered significant people that have helped us on our way.
The most prolific contributor to the New Testament was St Paul. Once a persecutor of the first Christians, he
became a Christian himself and elected Apostle to the Gentiles. Although we owe much to his teaching as one of the greatest Christian preachers to have ever lived, we owe a greater debt of gratitude to the early believers who supported him in the first stages of his journey of faith.
The first of these is faithful disciples of Christ was Ananias in Damascus, whose loving ministry to Paul, then
called Saul is recorded in Acts 9. Despite knowing the terrible suffering of fellow believers orchestrated by the zealous Saul of Tarsus, he trusted the direction and counsel of God instead of his own feelings of fear and dread. Thanks to the loving faith-filled prayers of Ananias, Saul received back his sight, was filled with the Holy Spirit and baptised.
The second significant person in St Paul’s journey of
faith was the man whose feast day we celebrate today, Joseph, “a Levite from Cyprus whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”)” (Acts 4:36). He was senior in the Christian faith to Paul and was amongst the early group of believers in Jerusalem. We read in Acts 9: 26-27 that despite the huge misgivings and suspicion of the Apostles who feared Saul and his reputation, it was Barnabas
who supported him and vouched for the authenticity of his conversion. In Acts 11:22-27 we see the Jerusalem Church sending this faithful “Son of encouragement” to Antioch in Syria to “encourage” the early believers. We read in v 23, “When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.” Barnabas then moved onto Tarsus to
search for Saul after which the two partnered in leading the Church in Antioch where Luke records in Acts, the early believers were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Thereafter, Barnabas became Paul’s faithful travelling companion and for many his first missionary journeys.
The stories of Barnabas and Ananias confirms the importance of the Lord’s commands to love. I firmly
believe that effective evangelism is best affected when people are loved into the Kingdom rather than threatened. Loving people means seeing them as God sees them and not as the world or even traditional Christian culture sees them. That often means looking past the outer packaging to see the person within. Had Ananias and Barnabas judged Saul by his outer packaging in the beginning, he might never have been
accepted by the Church and become the Apostle to the Gentiles he did.
The word “courage” is closely linked to the Old French word for the “heart” from which we get “Cœur”. To“encourage” therefore means to “give someone heart.” Conversely, “discourage” means to “take someone’s heart away.”
Barnabas was far from perfect though. We read in Gal 2: 11-14 that
unfortunately he and the Apostle Peter, yielded to peer pressure from other Jewish Christians by declining to eat in the presence of some Gentile converts. Furthermore, after an unfortunate dispute between them recorded in Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas parted company.
Whether or not Paul and Barnabas recognised their differences is not recorded in the scriptures, but later in his
ministry, Paul was to write to the Christians in Corinth: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” We do know that the person at the heart of the dispute, Barnabas’ cousin John Mark was late reconciled to Paul and became useful to him in ministry (2 Tim 4:11). Scholars believe that the
latter was the author of the first Gospel to be written.
The influence and support which Barnabas gave to Paul in the early stages of his journey of faith and ministry cannot be overstated. His story, despite its ups and downs is a reminder of our call to give heart and not take it.
Do you have a ministry of encouragement? If you do you are treasure for the
Church. All of us must remember the command to love one another as Christ has loved us. We must all seek to be encouragers. We must all try to look beyond the presenting character traits, “faults” or “differences” and packaging of the people we meet in order to be a “Son and daughter of encouragement.” Furthermore, we must never consciously behave in such a way toward others that
results in heart being taken from them.
Amen.