Antioch Series Part 2: God Rewrites Our Stories
I think that this issue is profoundly important to the Antioch story and important to what God is doing across the Earth as He is raising up “Antioch Sending Centers” for the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the promise of the global harvest. It is a leadership lesson that every believer must learn if they are going to carry the weight of much fruit that God intends to display through their lives for His glory.
Jesus is looking for something dynamically different than what the world is looking for in leadership potential. Men are enamored with giftedness, intelligence, charisma, skill, and strength. Jesus is looking for purity, love, humility, and a willing spirit. Our destiny and assignments are dynamically affected by how we respond in the grace of God to Jesus’ leadership in every season of the journey. In this school of leadership, there is promotion and demotion, fruit and pruning, favor and testing. Each season is an invitation to greater intimacy with him and authority in the Spirit. He is forming leaders to be able to carry the weight of what He wants to release in the earth in the generation of His return. Each promotion and each test is sovereignly orchestrated by the Lord to address the deep issues of pride, ambition, fear, and carnal wisdom that are currently operating in our souls that we cannot fully see or be aware of outside of His help. Jesus is a tender leader; He walks with us gently. He does not show us the sin issues hindering our destiny all at once; instead, He leads us through seasons, allowing us to cooperate with Him in grace. In the tests of delay and promotion, Jesus pries our grip off of what we imagined the fulfillment of the promises over our lives would look like so that we don’t reject the promise when it comes. In the delay, Jesus addresses the levels of our identity and self- confidence that are wrapped up in our “dreams” and our “callings”. He breaks down all the confidence in what we think qualifies us and produces a brokenness that is a sweet fragrance to God. Many of you have already taken a few courses in this leadership school and know what I am speaking about. Jesus is more committed to our destiny than we are. He is currently developing in you the wisdom, humility, and love you need to actually steward the fullness of the anointing and favor He wants to give you. If we remain unoffended at His ways even when they seem contrary to our good and opposite from the prophetic promises given to us, we graduate each season. Soon we come to realize that the fulfillment of the promises and the fruit of obedience is not our primary reward, it is actually the intimacy we experience with Jesus on the journey that deeply satisfies us. He is our reward.
Jesus prepares Apostolic vessels in the fiery furnace of delay. To those who won’t turn to the right or the left emerge as voices.
Peter declares to us that, if necessary, fiery trials are part of Jesus’ leadership over our lives to expose those hidden areas hindering our destiny. How we respond to those tests will determine how long and how often they are necessary. These fiery trials often have to do with the things that are closest to our hearts and emotions.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith--more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 1:6-7
Once, as a young leader, he had confidence in his own giftedness and zeal. Peter could remember firsthand what it felt like to go through Jesus’ leadership school.
Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night…” Peter answered and said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.” Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that this night before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” - Matthew 26:31-35
Fast forward, Peter is utterly broken and quitting on his calling on the shores of the Sea of Galilee after denying Jesus three times. In Peter’s greatest hour of brokenness and need, Jesus, the tender shepherd, meets him and redeems his worst moment. Then and only then is he ready to “feed the lambs” and “tend the sheep”. Only about a month after this, Peter is standing up on the day of Pentecost, preaching with power and authority.
When God rewrites your story, He takes your worst moments and makes them the doorway into your destiny.
Here in Antioch, one verse changes all of history, “so Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Paul and he found him and brought him to Antioch.” (Acts 11:25) God, the great author, is weaving a myriad of stories together in one verse to bring about a historic moment that, like an earthquake in the spirit, would send shockwaves around the world that are still rippling throughout the global church today.
Without Barnabas, without Antioch, without those that were scattered, we do not get the greatest contributor to the spread of Christianity throughout the known Roman world, the majority of New Testament Epistles, our understanding of church, missions, and Christian doctrine: the Apostle Paul. Yes, Antioch was the catalytic moment that launched the apostle Paul; and therefore, it stands as one of the most historic moments in church history. Before there were churches covering Asia Minor and letters written that would be read by countless men and women throughout history as inspired scripture, there was a young anointed man with a historic calling on his life going through Jesus’ school of leadership.
God had to rewrite his story.
Barnabas went and searched for the young man, Paul, who he met a few years earlier in Jerusalem. Paul had all but quit, living back in his parents’ house trying to pick up the pieces of his broken life after a seemingly failed launch. Three years in the wilderness of Arabia, mistreatment by the brothers, no acknowledgment by leaders, favor disappeared, vision for ministry grown dim, and everything he has is stripped away until he only has one thing left…. Jesus. The church in Jerusalem at that time did not want to associate with Paul and ended up sending home to Tarsus. Back home in Tarsus, Paul has run out of ideas and opportunities to get his ministry up and running. He’s back at his mom and dad’s house, trying to get a job as a tentmaker and trying to make sense of the last ten years of his life.
But he was enrolled in the Lord’s leadership training program…
Broken and discouraged, he was ready for one last leadership lesson from his gentle instructor. God uses even our worst moments and redeems our stories.
The moment that Saul of Tarsus walks through the door at Antioch, God catches everyone into a glorious revelation his divine plan and the goodness of his gentle leadership.
I don’t think we can appreciate the dynamic of this situation. The church of Antioch existed because of the persecution led by Saul against Stephen. (Acts 11:19) They were those that were scattered when they arrived in Antioch. And now, the man - who was responsible for their persecution and the scattering of their families, driving them from their homes as refugees on the run for their lives - that man walks in the door behind Barnabas.
Antioch is where God rewrites our stories.
God brought Paul to the very place that was the outcome of his worst moment. His darkest hour, when he was a persecutor of the church when he oversaw the systematic torture and imprisonment of every believer in Jerusalem, is now staring him in the face as he walks into the room.
God brought Paul to Antioch not only to launch him into his ministry but to bring him face to face with who he was so that he could be healed, freed from shame, and given a confidence that only comes with this revelation:
everything is grace.
In that moment, as the elders and families of the church in Antioch embrace him as a brother, I can imagine there were many tears as both persecutor and victim experience the washing of the love of the Father knowing that all along, the pain, the confusion, even the weakness and sin of others was part of a divine plan “to work all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28) Freedom from shame and unforgiveness becomes the doorway to our destiny.
Paul had to learn this last lesson before he could carry the kind of power and authority God intended to entrust him with. The Father doesn’t just redeem the good parts about us; He redeems even the parts we are most ashamed of and uses them for His glory. He doesn’t use us in spite of our weaknesses; He uses us because of our weaknesses. He doesn’t choose men and women because they are talented, skilled, or gifted. He uses whom He chooses, and He chooses the weak things to confound the wise.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. - 2 Corinthians 4:7
Every leader that God raises up to shepherd His people has to learn this lesson, and it’s usually through much pain and brokenness.
On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses-- ... But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. - 2 Corinthians 12:5, 9-10 ESV
Paul can own his past, not in a condemning, self-hatred way, but he can own even his worst moments because they cannot disqualify him from his destiny. Now Paul can walk in confidence knowing that his past does not define him but only the call of God through the finished work of the cross.
Later Paul writes to Timothy, hopeful that his spiritual son would take this same course in Jesus’ leadership school so that he can carry the weight of being a faithful and gentle shepherd.
I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent… the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. - 1 Timothy 1:12-16
