Acts 14:23Plain English VersionThen, in each town, Paul and Barnabas picked leaders for the Christians in the church there. After that, they stopped eating for a while, and they prayed for those leaders. They prayed, “Jesus, our leader, these men believe in you now, so we ask you to look after them all the time.” See the chapter |
Then Jesus’s special workers prayed. They said, “Judas left his job, and went his own way, and now he is dead. He went to that bad place. And God, you know everyone properly, and you know the way they think. Please show us the man that you want to take Judas’s place, and to do his job, and to be a special worker of Jesus.”
Paul and Barnabas got on a ship at Attalia, and they went back to Antioch, in Syria country. Antioch was the city where they started from, some time before. It was those Antioch Christians that asked God to look after Paul and Barnabas and be good to them, and then they sent them out to tell people about Jesus. That is the reason why Paul and Barnabas went back to Antioch after they finished that work.
So the church leaders wrote a letter for them to take with them. They wrote, “This letter is from Jesus’s special workers, and from the other church leaders in Jerusalem. We are writing to you Christian people that are not Jews, that live in Antioch, and in the rest of Syria country, and in Cilicia country. You are like brothers and sisters to us.
After that, Paul and the men with him got to Jerusalem, and the Christians there were happy to see them. Jesus’s special workers, and all the church leaders there, told them, “We are happy you came.” Then Paul and Barnabas, and the other men with them, told the Christians in Jerusalem everything that God helped them do.
Paul kept on talking. He said, “Now I’m asking God to keep you safe, and to keep you believing the true message that God is very good to you and will save you. If you keep on believing that message, you will grow strong for God, and you will know that you are in God’s family, and God will give you the good life that he is keeping for his own people.
If ever you need to pick somebody to be a church leader, pick somebody that has been a Christian for a long time, not somebody that is a new Christian. It is like this. If the person you pick starts to go wrong, everyone will blame you as well as blaming that person. So pick somebody that you know is really good, so that you don’t get yourself mixed up with something that is wrong.
But trouble doesn’t last for ever. After you have trouble for a short time, God will be good to you. He will make everything right for you and make you properly strong for him. He picked you to join you up with Jesus Christ. He did that so that, in the end, you will be very great with Jesus for ever.