Never Give Up
‘From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem’
(Acts 13:13)
Paul and Barnabus were in the early stages of what we now call the first missionary journey. They had been prophetically called, commissioned and sent out from the growing church in Antioch (Acts 13:1-3).
Barnabus’ nephew, John Mark, had joined Paul and Barnabus on this missionary trip, but he left the others when he found the going too difficult. This early phase of the trip had involved intense spiritual warfare concluding in a power confrontation that would have shaken even the strongest believer (Acts 13:6-12). Paul was unwilling to take John Mark on his next missionary trip because of what happened here (Acts 15:38).
How would John Mark have felt? He found the pressures of the ministry more than he could handle. Should he have gone to begin with? The prophetic word in Antioch that commissioned the trip was directed quite specifically to Paul and Barnabus, after all, and did not include him.
Not surprisingly, when Paul refused to take John Mark on the next trip, Barnabus took his nephew on a different missionary trip, but again to Cyprus, the same place where John Mark had earlier pulled out (Acts 15:39). God sometimes takes us around the mountain and brings us back to the place of an earlier failure. No matter what’s happened in your life, God is a redeeming, restoring God. Never give in and never give up. John Mark didn’t and became a later leader in the church.
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