After God arrested Paul on his way to Damascus and had opened his eyes through Ananias, we see Paul ending up back in Jerusalem after escaping people who wanted to kill him in Damascus.

The bible says that when he attempted joining the disciples there in Jerusalem, they were scared because they still harboured thoughts and knowledge of him as the man who was against the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So the bible says that Barnabas took him and introduced him to the apostles.

My mind began to ponder, could it be divinely orchestrated that God didn’t allow Paul blend in with the disciples in Jerusalem as at then?

Why would that be? You might ask…

Maybe because God needed Paul with a fresh mind for his own assignment, by this, I mean that maybe God didn’t want Paul mixing up with the disciples then because all they knew as at then was that the gospel was for the Jews alone and God intended that Paul will take the gospel to the gentiles too.

What if God was intentionally avoiding them mixing up so that the ignorance of the disciples will not hinder Paul from doing the work of God by taking the gospel to the gentiles.

It does not in any way make the disciples bad, it is just a realisation that sometimes, the newness of a persons assignment needs to be protected from people who might have thread a similar path before.

Their counsel would’ve been awesome to Paul but at that time, they possessed superior authority to have convinced him that something was right or wrong and they could’ve falsely convinced him that the gospel was for the Jews only because that was their height of understanding as at then.

Amidst the many things Paul teaches us, I think we also see in his life that no matter the level of corporate fellowship that we enjoy with other brethren, we must never leave our individual fellowship with Abba, because sometimes the assignment given you individually might not have been corporately made known yet.

This is for you who has struggled to “fit in” for so long, even among other believers.