Barnabas: Moral Excellence

Barnabas: Moral Excellence – May 12, 2024

1 Corintihians 9:3-14

Moms are the best! So, I want to reflect on how much mother’s or mother figures are a gift from God. Now, I understand that some of us have great relationships with our moms but for others, Mother’s Day can be a painful experience.

Some of us have a broken relationship with our mothers or maybe you’ve lost a mother, so we want to acknowledge that, and we are here for you. But for many of us, some of the most excellent people we know are moms or the maternal figures that God brings into our lives.

And it’s worth thinking about what makes them so excellent because it will make us more grateful, and it will give us ideas for how to be excellent ourselves. So, my big question today is what does personal excellence look like?

That’s what our Bible passage is about. Our Bible passage is part of a letter written by Paul to a church in the city of Corinth. Paul wasn’t their mom, but you might hear some of that motherly tone in our passage.

Barnabas: Moral Excellence – May 5, 2024

Acts 11:22-26

What is the worst thing that you could miss out on? I think to answer that question is: we have to look at what we were made for! I believe the Bible shows us that we were made for a relationship with God that informs all our relationships with others, and we were made to join him in the work that He has done and is doing and will do. I just think of the Genesis story where God creatively and wonderfully made everything from nothing and then He made humans and told them to do what He just did, turn raw material and chaos into beauty and order. We’re made to lovingly join him in his work and represent him to the rest of the world.

But the tragic thing is, even though everyone has access to this extremely valuable calling, we often forget about it and miss out on it. This will probably be what we’ll regret most looking back.

See, God is always always working in and around and through our lives, every single day. But because His ways are not always our ways, we won’t see it if we’re not intentional. And if we’re not intentional about it, we could be missing out on the greatest thing happening in our lives and not even know it.

And so how do we avoid missing out on all this?

Or in other words, how do we join God in his work?

We’re zoning in on Barnabas in this series, a man described as good, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and we’re using him as a model for how we can join God in His work! And this is what we see from him and what we’ll spend the rest of our time focusing on.

How do we join God in his work? We focus on:

  1. Enjoyment
  2. Encouragement
  3. Empowerment

Barnabas: Moral Excellence – April 28, 2024

Acts 9:19b-28

A few years back, social psychologist, Jean Twenge published a detailed study on the mental state of today’s teenagers and college students in a book called iGen. She found a rapid rise in depression and anxiety in young people. Twenge believes that the biggest reason for this problem is the rise of smart phones and social media.

People are connected by the internet, yet they feel alone. People are constantly comparing how they look and what they have. They see people doing fun activities without them and they feel left out.

Twenge writes, “By 2016, roughly one out of every five girls reported symptoms that met the criteria for having experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year. The rate for boys went up, too, but more slowly (from 4.5% in 2011 to 6.4% in 2016).” Very sad news!

However, one interesting part of her research is that she found five activities that are linked to lower rates of depression: sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.

Her research implies that churches like ours can make a significant difference in the lives of young people. So, my main question today is: how can we help people who feel alone? Our passage today is from Acts 9:26-28.

Our new sermon series is on Barnabas, who was a difference maker, and we can learn two things from him:

  1. We discern what God is doing
  2. We nurture what God is doing

Barnabas: Moral Excellence – April 21, 2024

“When Filled with the Holy Spirit”

Acts 4:29-37

When it comes to spiritual things there are all kinds of unspoken rules and things going on behind the scenes. And if we understand how it all works, we can have the best experience possible. We’ll know what to expect, and we’ll know what to aim for, and we’ll know if we’re on the right track or not.

So my big question today is: what should we expect if we’re following Jesus properly? My big idea today is: We should expect God’s power.

  1. We should expect God’s power outside the church
  2. We should expect God’s power inside the church.

That’s what our Bible story is about today. Let’s read now from the book of Acts 4:29-37. This is the beginning of our new series which follows a guy named Barnabas. the context for this story is that the early Christians were under threat by the same people who had killed Jesus. So the Christians were praying because they were in trouble. And now we’re going to eavesdrop on their prayer.