Are You an Acts 11 Christian?
And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
Acts 11:26 (NIV)
What made Luke, the writer of Acts, decide that it was important for later generations to know that it was in Antioch, after a year of Barnabas and Saul’s teaching, that the disciples were labeled as Christians?
Prior to this, those that were now called Christians were simply called disciples, brethren, believers, those being saved, or people of the way. Now from Acts 11 on, they are called Christians. And, interestingly, they are called Christians not by naming themselves. They are called Christians by an unbelieving public in Antioch.
This means to people in Antioch, Christ gave them the frame for coining the epitaph “Christiano.” It simply became the familiar way of talking about the peculiar change that had taken place over the last year for those who had surrendered themselves to the teaching of Barnabas and Saul.
They were called Christians because in that one year, they had convictions about a belief that Jesus is the only God and savior and teacher and model that can be imitated and emulated to ensure a person can live out God’s perfect will for their life. You don’t become a Christian and then go out and live however you want. No, when you’re a Christian, it is a very deliberative devotion.
So what is a Christian today? What does that label mean? If you interact with a Christian, what do you think you ought to hear and what should you encounter?
The tension we have when holding Acts 11:26 next to Christianity today is that there is very little resemblance between the two. There are so many lesser, lower, lighter, ludicrous definitions attached to what it means to be a Christian today. In our culture, the definition of a Christian can sometimes be dangerously different than what it meant originally to those describing the disciples in Antioch. What does it mean to you to be a Christian?
The power of being a Christian is the change, the behavior, the lifestyle, the interaction that you have with others that forces them to describe you amidst all the descriptions they use, as Christian. They come away saying, “I interacted with a Christian, and I know I interacted with a Christian because we couldn’t get through the conversation without Jesus coming up! They could not talk to me without pointing to what Christ has done, who Christ is, and the significance of Christ for our human salvation!”
Are you behaving, speaking, and thinking like an Acts 11 Christian?
Because He Cares
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)
Peter, in chapter 5 of his epistle, makes the bold theological assertion and affirmation to people who are being gripped by anxiety, weighed down by worry, and living excessively concerned about so many cares.
Peter gets a peek behind the veneer of our worries, and he responds to us like this:
Child of God, amidst the backdrop of so much for which you ought to have anxiety, cast your cares on Him. Why? Because He cares for you. The word “cast,” when transliterated from the original, means to toss or to throw.
Casting our cares on Jesus is the appropriate spiritual response to the questions that worry will often raise.
Jesus’s care for you gives you a reason to wake up every day against the backdrop of all we are dealing with in the various seasons of our lives. Casting your cares on Jesus challenges your assertions and forces you to wake up every day to ask yourself, “How deeply do I believe in Jesus?”
He is concerned about what is worrying you. In fact, He grieves over it. He has an emotional response to your lived experience. He feels your pain. He is acquainted with your grief. He is touched by your infirmities. Therefore,
- Don’t feel like you’re putting too much burden on Him. He can handle it.
- Don’t feel like you’re talking to Him too much. He prefers you to talk to Him.
- Don’t feel like your complaints are going to reach ears that are too sensitive to hear.
When worry is squeezing us, He wants you to cast your burdens on Him in humility.
As Christians, we live remembering that we did not come here to stay. Our total emotional investment therefore can never be deposited, nor should it be withdrawn, in one season alone. That is to say, don’t let worry make you offer a withdrawal of your healthy emotionality.
Because of Jesus, we are assured a salvation that results in Him being exalted and His people being elevated to rule and reign. We have to really trust what scripture says when it teaches that all things are working together for our good (Romans 8:28). Despite the persecution, the pressure, the people, the problems, the peril, and the pain, we have a living hope. We stand in the midst of uncertainty, but we are certain of this truth: Jesus Christ is the complete fulfillment of God’s intent for humanity—and He cares deeply for you!
Jesus Is Willing
Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Mark 1:40 (NKJV)
A leper came to Jesus begging for healing, and the first words out of his mouth speak so much to his life experience. He says to Jesus, “If You are willing…”
Do you catch the intonation of that? Do you hear the emotionality of it?
In those few words, it’s almost as if I can hear the leper saying, “I live every single day with people pushing me to the periphery. I am the nagging observation of everybody I come in contact with. Nobody wants to step into my malady. Nobody wants to get involved in the trauma that I’m living with every day. Nobody wants to extend compassion or sympathy. And I’ve heard about You, Jesus. I’ve heard You’ve caused blind eyes to see. I’ve heard that You’ve worked miracles. You probably wouldn’t want to waste time with a leper like me… but if You want to—if You are willing—You can make me clean.”
This man has been nurturing the fatigue that has gripped his life because of the way people around him have given up on him being anything other than a leper.
Verse 41 says, however, “Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’”
In those words, we can read Jesus’s empathy. “Your condition doesn’t change who I am. Nothing about your leprosy is a threat to me. The threat in your life is not causing me any angst or anxiety. The horror of your life is not causing me to flinch or fear at all. I want to get involved. It’s maladies like yours that I step right into and speak to until they give way to health, wholeness, and restoration. I want to help you, and since you haven’t given up on yourself after all this time, I’ll step into the fight with you.”
Friend, this is why you can’t ever give up on you. Jesus will never not want to help you become a better you. Don’t ever walk away from your aspirations, your goals, your dreams, and your visions—because you are in relationship with the Christ who says, I’ll never leave you.
As long as you’ve got fight in you, you can count on Jesus being in there with you because He wants you to prosper. He wants you to be more than a conqueror. He wants you to experience life and to experience it more abundantly.
Jesus will always be willing to help you.
Be Faithful with Money
“His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’”
Matthew 25:23 (NKJV)
The parables that Jesus told tell us how important it is to Him that you and I not separate money from our spirituality. Our spirituality includes our money—how we view it, how we use it, and how we steward it.
Why does the topic of money scare us as Christians? I can tell you that high on the list of things people really worry about is money. In fact, it ranks second to the worry people have about relationships.
People are worried about their money:
- The fear of not having enough
- The fear of losing what we have
- The fear of money controlling us
- The fear of decisions made because of money
- The fear of how others will view us if we have money
- The fear of how people will view us if we don’t have money
- The fear about how long our money will last
- The fear of who we might become if we get a lot of money
- The fear of who we might become if we don’t have any
I’m not as interested in why money scares us as much as I’m interested in how we erase those fears and worries about money.
The Lord wants us to live not only grateful for what He gives us, but He also wants us to work it. He wants us to apply strategy, to have a plan, and to live with a certain mindset about our money.
He doesn’t want us as Christians to be repelled by money or afraid to talk about it, but to use it for His glory and purpose. Jesus clearly makes money an important part of discipleship. He makes it important to what it means to be a Christian.
And the big question that would be asked by most is, “If this is how the Lord wants me to think about my money, how does He want me to steward it without letting it change me?”
The answer is this: He wants us to steward our money by being faithful with it.
Your money is a chance to demonstrate faith in God. You can show your faith by being a good steward of your money.
The Pinch of Worry
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Matthew 6:25 (NIV)
So many people live with constant worry that is negatively affecting their health and tempting then to live with far too deep a sense of insecurity.
It’s obvious that people these days are uneasy. They are edgy, disquieted, unsettled about almost everything, ranging from dealing with personal identity all the way to fear of future events. We are a worried people.
Worry is everywhere. It’s straining theological thought. It’s frustrating the pursuit of individual dreams. It’s creating limitations and making imaginative leaps of faith. It’s unsettling many people’s deep core convictions. It’s bringing conflicts to human exchanges and relationships.
But Jesus gave us comforting words that can be summarized like this: “Do not worry about your life. Don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will drink. Don’t worry about how you will clothe your body. Living is about more than merely eating, and the body is about more than dressing up. Look at the birds in the sky. They do not store food for winter. They don’t plant gardens. They do not sow, nor do they reap, and yet they’re always fed because your Heavenly Father feeds them. You are even more precious to Him than a beautiful bird. If He looks after them, of course He will look after you.”
Worrying does no good. The image of worry that the original Greek text gives is of being pinched all day long.
If you trust that God has promised to take care of your needs…
If you trust that He was part of the imagination that created you…
If you believe He will be there to receive you when your life reaches its finality…
If you believe that He’s preparing rooms for you in the kingdom of heaven...
If you believe that He can prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies…
If you believe that He answers prayers and makes ways for you…
If you know that He is a hedge of protection around you…
…then here’s what He says: “Do not worry about your life.”
Through our relationship with Jesus, He inserts His presence, His power, and His promises in our lives—particularly in places where we are restless, overly concerned, disquieted, and feeling like our emotions, experiences, and encounters are pinching us.
Here’s what God wants us to understand: worrying doesn’t weigh as much when you know what you are worth to God. When you realize just how valuable you are to Him, you won’t feel the need to worry about anything.
