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How to know your Church Fellowship is ‘after God’s Heart’
Everyone needs encouragement sometimes — a shoulder to lean on, an encouraging word, help that arrives just in the nick of time. Encouragement is of so much importance in context of faith in the name of Jesus Christ that the given name of a prophet who excelled in encouragement, ‘Joses’ became lost to him, because, once the Apostles surnamed him, ‘Barnabas’, which means, ‘Son of Encouragement’, from that point on, all knew him only as ‘Son of Encouragement’ (Acts 4:36–37).
It is important that believers who show up at church services (focus on those who get to stand on the podium), or better yet, church fellowships (focus on one another — whether sitting side by side, or standing on the podium), be able to receive encouragement in respect of pursuits of this life. As is well articulated in Christian Scriptures, if church fellowships do not cater to physical needs of believers, they are exercises in pretense, and perhaps chicanery (James 2:14–17).
If believers showed up at church services in the ancient city of Antioch, the city in which Barnabas went on to become one of the prophets (‘encouragers’) who ministered to believers, they were sure to receive all of the encouragement they could use for the week to come. For concreteness of Barnabas’ Holy Spirit inspired gift for encouragement, consider his response to Apostle…
