Seeing the grace of God and remaining with the Lord with purpose of heart

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I always enjoy my Lord’s day evening Bible reading and fellowship with a sister over the phone. This evening we were reading Acts 11:19-26, and I particularly enjoyed verse 23:

Who, when he arrived and saw the grace of God, rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain with the Lord with purpose of heart.


Here, Barnabas arrives in Antioch and saw the grace of God. The grace of God can be seen! It’s really true, when we meet with the brothers and sisters who have received and are enjoying the Lord, what we see is God expressed in their salvation, change in life, holy living, and the gifts they exercise in the meetings. We see the grace of God!

The footnote for remain with the Lord is also very sweet and says:

I.e., be persistently faithful to the Lord, cleave to Him, and live in close fellowship with Him.

And the cross-reference for with purpose of heart leads us to Romans 9:11 where we see this purpose is the purpose of God.
In our fellowship tonight, we appreciated that not only are we encouraged to remain with the Lord, to be in close fellowship with Him all the time, but also that this is not just to pass time, but it is for a purpose – the purpose of God. And what is the purpose of God? Romans 8:28-29 tell us that the purpose of God is to produce many brothers of His Firstborn Son. So this is why we remain with the Lord 🙂