06/17/2026
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Have you ever noticed that we spend a lot of time wondering if God knows what He's doing, while God spends absolutely zero time wondering if He knows what He's doing?
We look at our lives and see a collection of seemingly random events. A door closes. Another one opens. A prayer gets answered in a way we never expected. A person appears at exactly the right moment. Another person leaves. Something that looked like a disaster turns out to be a blessing, and something that looked like a blessing turns out to be a lesson. From our perspective it can feel a little bit like somebody dumped a thousand-piece puzzle onto the floor, kicked half the pieces under the couch, let a Jersey calf chew on three corners, and then asked us to explain the finished picture. We see scattered pieces. God sees the completed image.
Then you get to Acts 13 and realize God has never been assembling the puzzle as He goes. He already knows exactly where every piece belongs.
The chapter opens with believers worshiping, praying, and fasting when the Holy Spirit says, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." (Acts 13:2, ESV). That's it. No lengthy explanation. No detailed itinerary. No five-year strategic plan. No weather forecast. No guarantee that everyone they meet will be thrilled to see them. Just a calling and an instruction. Imagine being in that prayer meeting. One moment you're worshiping. The next moment two of your leaders are packing their bags and heading into the unknown because God said so. Sometimes I think we want God to provide seventeen pages of instructions, three backup plans, and a detailed map before we take the first step. Instead, He often says, "Start walking. I'll show you the next part when you get there."
Sure enough, almost immediately they run into opposition. Because apparently this has been a universal law since the beginning of time. If you decide to do something God wants you to do, somebody somewhere is going to decide that this is a terrible idea. In this case it was a magician named Elymas who opposed them and tried to keep others from believing. If you've ever wondered whether standing against God's plans is a successful long-term strategy, Acts 13 provides a fairly clear answer. It is not. It turns out that fighting the Creator of the universe is one of those activities that sounds much more impressive until you actually try it.
The part that really stands out to me, though, is Paul's sermon. He stands up and starts walking through Israel's history. Abraham. Egypt. The wilderness. The judges. Saul. David. The prophets. One event after another. One generation after another. One promise after another. If I had been sitting there listening, I think the realization would have slowly started creeping in that none of these stories were ever separate stories. They were all connected. Every victory, every failure, every miracle, every waiting period, every promise God made was pointing somewhere. The entire Old Testament was like a giant trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to Jesus.
Imagine being one of the people listening and suddenly seeing all those pieces come together. It's the spiritual equivalent of finding out that all the seemingly unrelated plot lines in a mystery novel have been connected the entire time. Suddenly Abraham isn't just Abraham. David isn't just David. The Exodus isn't just the Exodus. They're all part of one enormous redemption story that God had been writing for centuries. What may have looked like disconnected events scattered across generations were actually chapters in a single story authored by God Himself.
Then Paul arrives at the center of it all. Jesus. Not a new plan. Not Plan B. Not God's attempt to fix something that had gone wrong. The plan. The fulfillment. The destination toward which everything else had been pointing from the very beginning.
Then Paul says something that still has the power to stop us in our tracks today: "Through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you." (Acts 13:38, ESV). Through Jesus. Not through trying harder. Not through pretending to have everything together. Not through accumulating enough good deeds to offset the dumb things we've done. Not through becoming spiritually impressive enough that God finally says, "Well, I suppose you've earned it." Through Jesus.
I think that's part of why the Gospel is so powerful and, at the same time, why it makes some people uncomfortable. Human nature likes earning things. We like being able to point to our accomplishments. We like checklists. We like measuring ourselves against other people. We like being able to say, "Look what I did." Grace comes along and says, "Look what He did." That shifts the focus from our performance to His perfection, and that can be a humbling thing.
Not everyone liked hearing that. In fact, some people became so jealous and angry that they began stirring up opposition against Paul and Barnabas. Yet one of the things I love about Acts is how often opposition ends up accomplishing the exact opposite of what people intended. They try to stop the Gospel and somehow it spreads farther. They try to silence the message and somehow more people hear it. It's a little like trying to stop dandelions by blowing on them. You may have started with one problem, but congratulations, now you have six hundred.
By the end of the chapter Paul and Barnabas have been rejected by some, welcomed by others, and eventually driven out of the region. From a human perspective that might look like failure. After all, getting run out of town generally doesn't make most people's list of career goals. Yet the chapter closes by saying, "And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 13:52, ESV).
That verse makes me pause because their circumstances hadn't suddenly become easy. The opposition was still real. The rejection was still painful. The road ahead was still uncertain. Yet they were filled with joy anyway. Their joy wasn't based on comfort. It wasn't based on popularity. It wasn't based on everything working out exactly the way they had hoped. Their joy came from knowing they were exactly where God wanted them to be.
Maybe that's one of the biggest lessons from Acts 13. We spend so much time worrying about the chapter we're currently living in that we forget God is writing the entire book. We can only see the page in front of us. He sees the beginning, the middle, and the ending all at once. And while we may occasionally feel like confused characters wandering around the story wondering what happens next, the Author has never once lost track of the plot.
