Real People, Real Faith Series

There are people in the Bible who are well known, like Paul, and Peter, and John. We all know that they were a very important part of the early church. There are others who were just as important to the church but are not that well known. Barnabas is one of those people. But as we will find out, he had a very important role in the early church. Let's see who he is and why God included him in the Bible.

We live in a world that seems to be crumbling at the seams. We live in a world that is full of fear. People are in fear of the future. People live in fear of their lives. Your generation is growing up in a world of guns, terrorist attacks, and lots-o drugs. It seems that our country has taken all their morals and tossed them out the window. How can a person growing up in this world be assured of anything? Can a person really live at peace? Can a person live in this country, in this world, and not worry?

Moses did the same thing and God got a little hacked at him. Gideon, like each of us, always has some lame excuse why we can't or won't obey God. "AHHHH!! God, I can't spend time in the Bible. I sprained my finger turning the pages and it hurts soooo bad." or "Hey God, why don't you ask someone else who is more qualified." or "God, you have no idea how busy I am. Please don't add any more to my schedule". Imagine trying to update God on our current situation. Like He doesn't know everything about us already. How lame is that?

Have you ever imagined what it was like for Mary to be the mother of Jesus? There had been countless prophecies about the coming Messiah. Everyone knew the Scriptures and what they told about the Messiah. But when the angel Gabriel showed up and told Mary that she would be the one, the one person in all of history, to help bring the Son of God into the world, I can't imagine how she felt. This G-TRAX is not about the Christmas story. It's about Mary and the faith, the real faith that she had to have to be that person that bore the Messiah and bring Him into this world.

The story of Samson can be found in Judges 13 and 14. Samson, like Gideon, lived during a time when judges ruled in Israel. This is long before Israel was ruled by kings like Saul, David and Solomon. During the time of the judges, Israel didn't have a king to rule over them so they had to rely on these judges to keep them in line. During this time, God would raise up men, and sometimes women, to challenge the Jews to come back to God and to help destroy their enemies. If you've read the Old Testament all the way through, you know that the Israelites would spend a lot of time rebelling against God. When they rebelled, God would "spank" them by sending other nations to conquer them. This usually involved a lot of bloodshed and other ugly stuff. After they had endured a lot of pain under the control of these other nations, they would cry out to God and ask for His forgiveness and ask to be rescued from their misery. God would then rise up a deliverer, sort of like Moses, that would help deliver them from their enemies. The book of Judges in the Old Testament is full of these Deliverers or Judges. Samson was just one of them.