Latest / Gospel Talks Podcast / #77 - Be A Barnabas: Connecting People For The Sake of Christ.

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#77 - Be A Barnabas: Connecting People For The Sake of Christ. · Gospel Talks Podcast

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Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.
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With me today is none other than the founder and author of the exchange, Jeff Musgrave.
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We're excited to be with you guys.
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We're be talking about connecting people.
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Barnabas in Acts had a unique ministry before him and Paul partnered in ministry, before he's known as the very generous, generous person who's, you know, sold land and all that.
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That actually might have happened before this, but in between all that somewhere, he is the person that brings Paul into the Christian community and establishes, helps to
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establish Paul's credibility.
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And so that's one of the things that he's known for.
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We want to talk about that in a local church environment, how every believer can be a Barnabas.
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And I think, Jeff, you were saying this earlier.
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Before all that, they must have had some sort of relationship.
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I mean, these were normal people.
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So they must have...
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know, connected somehow.
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Barnabas must have had a reason for wanting to get behind Paul.
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Yeah, and I think that the very fact that he got close enough to Paul, that he believed in him and wanted to take him to the Apostles, something in that relationship must have been
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deep and real.
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And they they talked on a deeply spiritual basis.
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And he's saying, man, this is a guy that the Apostles really love.
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And none of that would have happened if he was not personally connecting to Paul to begin with.
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He's he is a great model for us in terms of being a connect.
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Well, we know later on they go on to become extremely close partners and friends.
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And so they must have had a love and a friendship for each other that preceded that partnership even that is the reason, the impetus behind Barnabas wanting to really connect
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Paul to the rest of the church.
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Now, when I think about connecting people, I think of this business word called networking.
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And I don't know about you, but I kind of cringe a little bit when I hear.
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Mmm
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or a networking conference or something like that.
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I mean, I'm just curious, how do you feel about that concept of like going to a conference just to like, you know, network and increase your Rolodex?
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I don't think I've ever been involved in that setting.
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So I only hear the word networking for me in terms of let's connect with as many people as we can, and utilize that network for the kingdom.
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And that's, that's what I believe is exactly what Paul and Barnabas did.
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They were networking, but they were using their connections for the kingdom, their their motive is what was different.
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Some of the techniques are the same.
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right, exactly, exactly.
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I think there are some, I think we can redeem this idea of networking a little bit and point to the Bible where it tells us, know, here's a way to network for the sake of the
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kingdom of Christ.
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But, you know, whenever I feel a relationship is not authentic, whenever I feel a relationship is purely transactional, that...
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You only want to be close to me to get something from me.
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It is a huge turn off.
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mean, I just it
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We all have met people who are our sales kind of people and they all they want is for me to sign on the bottom line and to do it tomorrow, or maybe today or maybe yesterday.
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You know, I was in college and one of the youth leaders from my youth group growing up called me and said, I'd love to take you to coffee.
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And I thought, you know what?
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He was one of my youth leaders.
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He's probably just wanted to check in on me, see how college is going.
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Maybe he's even proud of the fact that I'm in Bible college studying for ministry.
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And so we show up to the Starbucks and sitting next to him is a guy that I know is a salesman.
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You know, I already know, I just...
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Seeing both of them there, I already knew what the whole conversation was gonna be about.
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And I went from having a smile on my face to having a frown on my face because I walked in and I thought, man, I thought we were just gonna catch up.
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I thought you wanted to do this because you like me, ah but you just want something from me.
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And of course the whole pitch is at that point, well, we're actually doing this for you.
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You don't understand.
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This is such a good deal for you.
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You give us $3,000.
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and then you'll continue to go on and make all sorts of money.
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So anyway, by doing to other people what they did to me, and I don't know, it's just to me that it feels wrong almost.
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I don't know if that's too strong to say it that way, but stuff like that just doesn't feel right to me.
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It doesn't feel like the biblical thing.
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I think that we have to be really careful about that when we're trying to reach people for Christ, because we do have a bottom line we we we have a goal in mind we want this person
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to come to Jesus.
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But we do have to in the process let them know, I care about you.
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I mean, this is not me trying to accomplish something I am spending time with you because I like you.
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And I genuinely care for you.
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I genuinely care about you.
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I think the key ingredient in all that that makes this kind of connection and connecting people possible, what Barnabas did with Paul, is trust.
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Trust is a big, big deal.
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It takes lots of time to build trust and it doesn't take a lot of time to lose it.
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You could lose it in just one moment.
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Yeah, I think trust is critical.
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I think if if you think in terms of distrust, then you realize how important trust is.
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Does that make sense?
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distrust shows us, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with those people, da da da.
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But the opposite of that, I really want to spend time with those people because I trust them.
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I enjoy them.
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I think that
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term enjoyment is really important.
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Relationships ought to have a reciprocal enjoyment involved that both of us like spending time with each other.
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You know, the other thing that's interesting is when you look at the Bible, you look at the New Testament.
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It's amazing to me how much time Jesus spent with people, how much relationship time there is recorded in the Bible just between Jesus and people, the apostles and people.
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I mean, there was significant time spent just building relationship, and uh a lot of it revolved around food.
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And so there's this investment in people.
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that to build trust over time, just required lots of time and energy and even, you know, money.
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Yeah, I think recognizing that relationships do cost, I think is important for us to think in terms of we have to be willing to pay the price both time wise and financially in terms
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of meals and that sort of thing.
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But, you know, I saw a little bit of the notes you were talking about when we eat with people.
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it's really not about the food, it's it's really about investing in that person and being willing to commit to that person.
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And to be with them in that kind of environment in which is much more of a social and I care about you.
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We enjoy each other, we like each other kind of an environment.
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Yeah, you know what's amazing to me is for so much of my ministry, I thought I have to...
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I can't just be with people.
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Like have to give them something.
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I have to gift them something.
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I have to spend money on them.
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And over time that got really expensive to build relationships that way.
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And it was quite, you know, inauthentic.
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It was transactional because I put this pressure on myself to...
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to do that.
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And I do love buying gifts for people.
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I do love treating people out to a meal.
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But I at times underestimated just the power of presence.
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That just sitting down and giving people your time is a much more valuable thing you can give them than any material thing.
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And it'd go much farther, much longer than would a material thing because presence and human connection is something we're created for.
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It's a sole need we have.
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when Paul wrote to the Roman uh Church, he'd never been there before.
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And he says, I want to bring you a gift.
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And it was his spiritual gift of him.
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And as we spend time with people as we give to them, Christ in us the hope of glory that that is a great gift to be able to give people with our time is a gift.
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And we need to think of it in terms of being generous with ourselves.
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Yeah, Barnabas was known to be a generous person.
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He was known to be a generous person because apparently he had a significant plot of land that he sold and gave to the church in Jerusalem.
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I think Paul was a generous person too.
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I think that's probably one of the reasons they got along so well is because, well, they certainly had this quality in common.
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Paul was willing to sacrifice
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and be bivocational to do what he did for churches and getting them up and going, as was Barnabas.
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And so they were sacrificial, generous people.
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And it's just kind of cool to think about.
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But that quality is really important in being a person that connects people.
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And then it becomes the motive for connecting people is when you're in ministry and you realize, hey, this person...
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has this background and this personality and I just met this person who needs to know Jesus Christ as savior who doesn't know Jesus yet and I need to connect them and I don't
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get anything out of it personally but I connect them because out of a heart of generosity I want to give this person the opportunity of a lifetime and I want to give this person a
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relationship with somebody that I think they'll get along with and be able to find out who Christ is through that.
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relationship.
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so there's also a generosity in connecting people that altogether is a ministry of itself.
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love that.
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I feel like when I think of the word connector, I actually think in terms of connecting people to Jesus, I mean, he is the other person that I'm bringing them to.
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And when we can involve another person like that, I think it's awesome.
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But I really do believe that most of the people that we're talking to right this minute, what they need to be thinking about is if I can be a connector, my goal in connecting is
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being able to
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get people connected directly to Jesus.
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That's what the preacher, that's what the disciple maker, that's what the brother and sister in Christ does.
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We literally want to get ourselves out of the picture eventually, because we've connected this person to Jesus, and now Jesus is the one who is taking care of
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Hmm.
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You know, I love that because it shows you that the value you can bring to people just by giving.
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And we often think of gospel ministry as explaining or arguing or something like that.
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But the gospel ministry is giving and what we're giving, we're giving them Jesus Christ.
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We're giving them relationship with Jesus Christ.
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We're giving them access to that.
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We're giving them information about it.
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We're giving them truth about it and we're praying for them that they would know that reality.
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know, Barnabas, a generous person but also probably a curious person and not that impressive but connecting people all the time.
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And so like we've said many times on this podcast, just taking an interest in somebody is a way of getting to know them.
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I think the temptation that comes is when you become a person who's good at taking an interest in people and getting to them, you can start to think of ways how you can
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leverage these relationships, maybe for some of your own personal goals.
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But I think if we have a kingdom mentality, if we have a gospel mentality, we look at all these relationships and figure out how we can connect these people so they better know
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Jesus.
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I think that's, when I think about who a Barnabas is, what I mean by be a Barnabas, that's kind of the idea that I'm going for in my mind in terms of when I look at the scriptures.
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Barnabas was this guy who said, I want to connect these people for the sake of the gospel.
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Yeah, I love I think I've mentioned this to you earlier.
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I love the concept of a honeybee.
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You know, a honeybee is going out into the world to collect pollen.
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I mean, his goal in life is to collect pollen.
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But the whole time he is collecting, gaining, he's giving.
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And literally, this world can't exist without honeybees.
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We have to have bees that can pollinate all of the plants around us, including plants that give us food.
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And that's really the idea here is that yes, a connector probably has some mindset of the reason I want to get to know this person is because.
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But if he has that thought process of everywhere he's going that I am generous, I am, I'm coming to be an encourager, I'm coming to find out needs and meet needs, all of those
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things.
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are things that make connectors powerful people.
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Yeah, I think there's nothing more powerful than that and just adding value to people, adding eternal value, adding truth, bringing truth into their lives, bringing light into
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their life.
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You invest like that, there's gonna be tremendous dividends on the other end, but they aren't financial and they aren't gonna be able to pad your pocketbook, but you are going
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to be able to win treasure for eternity.
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forever.
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And I mean, it's just incredible when you think about the impact you can have on the world by just five, six relationships in your lifetime of that kind of love towards people.
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I like to think in terms of I want to be the kind of person that I'm investing into the kingdom of God.
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mean, that is my goal, that is my motive.
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And so if I can help a person know Jesus, help a person grow in Jesus, be a disciple maker, invest in that person, literally while I'm investing in that person,
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I'm investing into the kingdom.
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Those are the those are they're one in the same when that's our goal.
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Yeah, yeah, I think so.
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think those motives have to be gospel motives, but you're exactly right.
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Now, I will say there's an interesting point in Paul and Barnabas' life where though Barnabas was a connector and though they loved each other and had this tremendous
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friendship, they had a falling out.
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And it's interesting that what they had a falling out was over a common connection, John Mark.
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and Paul was kind of done with John Mark and Barnabas was like, no, I'm not done with him.
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I think he's still useful.
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And Barnabas didn't give up on John Mark.
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I don't know what you've, have you ever kind of sided with one or the other in terms of Paul or Barnabas on that issue where they divided over this?
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I have a hard time not siding with Barnabas.
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I have a hard time not I do though think that I can give Paul the benefit of the doubt in that he genuinely wanted the ministry to be effective and felt like john mark was not
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going to be a contributor to the team or maybe even a distractor to the team.
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And I feel like we've got to not allow him to come because the the
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goal is more important.
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think Barnabas on the other hand says, yeah, well, let's do the goal and remember the people.
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And so it wasn't like Paul went off and did ministry and Barnabas got out of the ministry.
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Barnabas just went and did ministry somewhere else.
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So I have a hard time not siding with Barnabas.
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But I also give Paul little bit of a break here.
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He did have a good motive.
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So I guess the question would be for us in the context we live in is what is this kind of Barnabas-like behavior, for lack of a better term, what does it look like to be this kind
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of person in the church today?
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What does it look like to be this kind of person in the community today as a laborer in the harvest?
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are we to learn from Barnabas for the sake of that?
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Yeah, I think one of the best ways for us to answer that question is just look around at your church.
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I guarantee you there is somebody who is constantly got a smile on his face constantly thinking about people over there people over there, giving themselves when you talk with
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them, you've got the whole him with the whole her.
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And if we just kind of look around the church, I get I can almost guarantee you there's a Barnabas there somewhere we can
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we can say, hey, I want to become like him.
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I want to become like her.
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Hmm.
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Yeah, I think that it's a culmination of things, right?
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We've talked about all these things separately, but putting them together for the sake of being a Barnabas, it's the kind of person that listens, it's the kind of person that takes
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interest in people.
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It's the Kaizen person that is zealous for the Kingdom of God and to see people know Jesus Christ.
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So they're always thinking about how God in His sovereignty and providentially is introducing all the relationships in their life for a reason.
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and you sitting there as a person are trying to say, okay, Lord, how do want me to steward these connections that I have for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Jesus, the
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furtherance of your kingdom?
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I do that all the time.
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do that, Jeff, and you're a master of that, especially in ministry, but not just because we're pastors.
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think God has just put that inside of us.
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I think it's inside a lot of laborers who aren't pastors or necessarily even leaders in church like
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over a big ministry or anything like that.
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You don't need any of those things to use this kind of superpower.
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The idea is you're constantly looking around and figuring out how people fit together and you're trying to discover why has God put all these same people in the same room, even
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though some of them may not even get along naturally.
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I gotta imagine there was friction between John, Mark, and Paul before the blow up.
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know, Paul kind of probably already felt like he's not the most valuable person to me.
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for one reason or another.
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And so when the blow up happened, they parted ways over that.
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But regardless, Barnabas was the kind of person that looked around and said, but there's a reason we're all together.
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There's a reason we're all on the same team.
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I wonder how God's gonna use all of us.
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Yeah, I that's really interesting to think in terms of what was going through john Mark's mind, not just preserving and protecting but thinking in terms of the whole I think
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looking at that big picture sometimes it's a little difficult.
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I you've got a word on here that I think is really important in terms of your notes.
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And that is that we have to be intentional about this that it's not just something that we haphazardly do that we have to purposely think in
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terms of how can I meet the needs of the people in this room?
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And how can I help and invest into the kingdom by the time that I'm spending here in this room?
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Jesus did this all the time in his ministry.
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All the time he was going and grabbing people or approaching somebody saying, you should come and follow me.
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You should come and see what's going to happen.
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You should come and see who I am.
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And oftentimes he was choosing somebody knowing that later on he had a purpose for them.
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Jesus chose John.
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And then in, I think it's John chapter 19,
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He says on the cross, he says to Mary, look, this is now your son.
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And he says to John, this is now your mother.
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And so there was a purpose.
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There was a purpose all along.
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There was many different purposes for John, but that was one of them.
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And so I don't think Jesus ever wastes a relationship.
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All the relationships that he puts in your life, he puts there intentionally on purpose.
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He has a purpose for them.
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He has a gospel purpose for them.
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You know, something that you wrote out here, this I'm going to quote you on this, your influence grows fastest when you stop promoting yourself and start promoting others.
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And I really think that's the key here is, you know, Jesus was actually being selfless on the cross.
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He was thinking in terms of the needs of his mother, he was thinking in terms of this guy.
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is the kind of person I want to be taking care of his mother.
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He wasn't thinking about himself.
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He was promoting others.
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He literally promoted john above his brothers to care for his mother.
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That is just a beautiful picture of, of lifting others and helping them to rise higher.
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I love that, I love the way you put that.
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It makes me think about investment.
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I mean, is a disclaimer, this is not a podcast about investments and we're not gonna give you financial advice here.
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You need to go get your own financial advice.
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But I'm the kind of person I really believe that you need to invest for the future, right?
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And so we tend to think very balanced, very reasonably about that in our financial lives.
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It's like you gotta put away
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for the future.
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And if you're watching markets this week, this is an interesting week for markets.
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It's an interesting week for different kinds of markets.
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But I think about having that mentality that I have as an investor of financial things and bringing that over into the people category and really taking seriously that, there is
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extreme value and return here.
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And it's not about my personal return.
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It's about I invest in this person.
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for the sake of Jesus, which means Jesus is actually the beneficiary, though he's using me as the investor.
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He's allowing me be a vessel in this relationship, a channel, but it's Jesus that is the ultimate beneficiary, to kind of put it in financial terms.
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And there's something really incredible about that because Jesus saved me.
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I mean, I am the ultimate beneficiary in terms of the atonement of Jesus Christ, His blood, His sacrifice, eternal life,
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I have been given unfathomable riches and inheritance.
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The beginning opening chapters of Living the Exchange talks all about what you've come into in terms of salvation.
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I love it.
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I think they're some of the most rich chapters I've never thought that way before until I read the Living the Exchange.
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And then you think about how now you get to turn around and invest in people, and now Jesus is the beneficiary because you were already the recipient.
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uh
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thing about our relational connections with people and our relational connection with Jesus is we can be as generous as we could could possibly think in terms of investing in
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others.
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And we never run out because Jesus is an infinite source.
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And he's constantly meeting my needs.
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He's constantly being generous to me.
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And so we can afford to be generous because we have such a generous caregiver.
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One of the best books that uh I read on this is a book you gave me, Jeff, last year called Relentless Encourager written by a pastor in your area.
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And it is probably the encapsulation of this episode in terms of what we're thinking about is being a relentless, I think that is one of the key ingredients is being an intentional,
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relentless, encourager of people.
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That's what it means to invest in them.
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That's the biblical word.
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for investing in people is be an encourager and introducing people to Jesus Christ, introducing believers to non-believers for their sake, for the sake of the non-believer,
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and being the type of person that produces opportunities for the kingdom because you just genuinely love people and seek nothing in return.
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I think that somebody who lives their whole life on earth, whatever's left of their life on earth that way is a person who's
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who's bringing tremendous value into the kingdom and is tremendously benefited by having that kind of role in impacting eternity in that way.
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You know, you were talking about being practical.
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And what does this look like today?
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When I think of the people who are connectors around me, it shocks me sometimes when I see them and I haven't seen them for a while and they'll ask me, you know, how is so and so
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doing?
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And what's going on in such and such circumstance, because they remembered the concerns that I had.
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And they followed up on those.
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And I really believe that that that
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A relentless encourager is not just going to be someone who says encouraging things, but is going to engage with that person and stay engaged with them and follow up with
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difficult situations.
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That's that's what an encourager does.
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He doesn't give up on people.
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I love that.
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I tend to get really hyper focused on my life and I tend to forget about people that aren't sitting right in front of me.
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And I think that's a temptation of our very fast moving day and age that we're living in right now.
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And I think one of things we have to do is get our nose out of our phone, get our focus just off of our lives, strictly our lives and our concerns and our future and start
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thinking about the people around us.
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I think this is something that's desperately needed in churches all across the country.
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It's the answer, quite frankly, to a lot of the problems of our society is if we could stop being kind of just thinking about what's going on in my sphere and start thinking
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about other people's lives whenever we're feeling down, that's a good time to minister to somebody else.
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And Satan loves to keep us focused on us.
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And one of the things that God calls us to is being focused on other people and serving other people.
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Jesus Christ came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.
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I'm feeling low, and kind of depressed and not wanting to reach out and take care of others.
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I'm actually making it worse by not doing that.
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And by reaching out and serving others, I end up helping myself in the process, not that I do it to help myself, but but it's just amazing.
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God made us to connect with other people.
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And that whole sense of community.
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The reason we don't have much community in the world we live in today is because we are all so selfish and we live in our own little selfish bubble, our selfish entertainment.
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I want this kind and this kind and this kind and none of that.
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it's also designer perfect for me that I'm not really connecting with others in this community.
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Right, right.
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I think the algorithms have taught us to be selfish because they just give us what we want.
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sometimes we look at relationships that way and Barnabas wasn't like that.
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He didn't go, oh, I just, prefer John Mark or I prefer John Marks over Paul's personality or Paul's personality over John Mark.
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Obviously John Mark and Paul didn't have the same personality, but Barnabas, because of his love for people decided that he wasn't gonna, he wasn't gonna stake relationships
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based on his preference in somebody's personality.
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He was going to stake it based on the value that Jesus Christ gave them.
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um
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value that Jesus places in that person, which is he loves every single person, just the way they are.
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I love the way Alcorn said that, but he did he loves him too much to leave him that way.
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And he wants to rescue them.
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So that's what John Mark went around doing.
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Yep, yep.
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Anything else before we close this out?
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No, I just want to remind everybody this is deeply biblical.
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is a leadership strategy that is actually what discipleship is all about.
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But it's not a worldly concept.
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It's a biblical concept.
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um It is a concept that the world has looked at and said, hey, I think we can utilize that.
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And we can learn from some of the books that help
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us understand it.
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But the fact is, this is what we see in the scripture.
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This is what we see.
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Jesus telling us to the first commandment and is to love God most and to love others second.
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And I just think this is this is the life God wants all of us living.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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I love it.
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Well, we love you guys and pray with us as we pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers.
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Be this leader.
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It's something we're all called to is to be like a Barnabas in our life and in our ministry in our communities and take a concern in other people and take a risk by starting
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a relationship with somebody else.
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And so that God calls us to be risk takers in terms of people.
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and gospel opportunities.
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Well, we love you guys and we'll see you next week.