PODCAST
Victors, Not Victims
January 29th, 2014
Acts 14:21-28
Paul and Barnabas were probably close to exhaustion. Their first missionary journey together would be their only one as a team. They had previously shared the pain of not being trusted by the church when Barnabas introduced Paul to a fearful group of early believers. Paul had to be evacuated out of Damascus in a basket to avoid assassination. They had been stoned in Asia Minor; now, on the way back to Antioch they were being persecuted again.
Nevertheless, along the way they became what Ralph Earle translated as “supervictors” (Rom. 8:37)–a word used only that one time in the New Testament. On this first mission trip, wherever they went–they organized new churches in every city. Part of being a supervictor was doing what God had called them to do, without regard to the threats around them. Their key was continual, regular fellowship and communion with God, the all-sufficient One who had called them. Twenty centuries later, our victory today is nourished on these same “habits of the heart.”
Author: J. Timothy White
