Take a moment to read Acts 13:13-52 before reading the devotional below.
Sometimes when people reject the message God asks you to bring, you need to shake the dust off your feet and keep it moving. Here in Acts 13 Paul and Barnabas move on from Cyprus and in their continued travels Paul preaches to an eager crowd about how Jesus fulfilled the Jewish law and history. He opens the Gospel up to the Gentiles as well and the people are so excited that the next week the entire city turns out to hear the message. The Jewish people and the God-fearing Gentiles are amazed to see how Jesus is truly the Messiah.
But of course, as we have continually seen in our exploration of Luke and Acts, the religious leaders do not like this message. One word struck me in verse 45: jealous. Turns out when you’ve been preaching in this place for a while and you don’t get a huge following, you start to want what Paul’s got. Unfortunately, instead of seeing that what Paul had was a supernatural anointing by the Holy Spirit, the religious leaders could only see from an earthly perspective. They thought he had popularity, not a unique calling from God. When an angry mob runs Paul and Barnabas out of town, they don’t doubt themselves or their calling, nor do they try to appease those who are jealous. They simply shake the dust off their feet and keep on moving.
Your calling is bigger than the reactions you get. Paul and Barnabas could have gotten caught up in that same earthly perspective that the religious leaders had — “Look at these crowds! We’re pretty awesome! (Sure, I’ll sign that autograph for you…)” Or they could have tried to make the religious leaders happy with them. But when God asks us to do something, we cannot live by the reactions of the crowd, whether it is good or bad. We must hold tight to the calling that Jesus gives us and not let go no matter what the circumstance.