In Lystra, Paul and Barnabas healed a crippled man. The pagan crowd hailed the two missionaries as the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes. When Paul and Barnabas forcefully stopped the crowd from worshipping them, their opponents used the people’s frustration to trigger a riot that nearly cost Paul his life. But when he and Barnabas returned to Antioch, their report focused, not on the hostility they met, but on God’s work in saving Gentiles.

• Try this intriguing exercise at supper or in a staff meeting at work: ask everyone to name the best thing that’s happened to them that day, or that week. One or more people will almost surely answer by instead listing the worst thing that happened! Were Paul and Barnabas just natural (or even naïve) optimists? If not, what helped them, after a journey full of opposition and danger, to report “how God had opened a door of faith for the Gentiles”? How can you develop the same spirit?
• Sometimes what happened to Paul and Barnabas seems to happen to church leaders today. We think they are wonderful—their messages insightful, their personalities pleasing, their ministries fruitful. Until, that is, we discover that they are just human. Then we want to stone them for whatever flaw created that awareness in us! How can you value and respect the leaders of your church without “deifying” them?