Acts 13:2-10

²Those men had a special time when they stopped eating any food for a while and they prayed to God. At that time the Holy Spirit said to them, “Pick out Barnabas and Saul for me now. I have special work for them to do.”

³So those men kept on praying and not eating any food for a bit longer, then they put their hands on Barnabas and Saul, and prayed for them, and told them, “You can go now and do God’s work.”

⁴The Holy Spirit told Barnabas and Saul the way to go, so they went to the town called Seleucia, and then they got on a ship and sailed to the island called Cyprus.

⁵They took John Mark with them to help them in their work. They got off the ship at a town called Salamis, and they went to the Jewish meeting houses and told the people God’s message about Jesus.

⁶Barnabas, Saul and John Mark went over to the other side of the island, to the town called Paphos. The Roman boss of the island lived there. His name was Sergius Paulus. He had a good head, and he wanted to hear God’s message, so he sent men to bring Barnabas and Saul to him. (Saul had another name. They called him Paul.) There was a Jewish man there that worked for Sergius Paulus. His Jewish name was Bar-Jesus, and his Greek name was Elymas. He was a magic man, and he used to reckon that he was telling people God’s messages, but he was lying. Elymas tried to stop Barnabas and Paul from telling God’s message to Sergius Paulus. He kept telling his Roman boss, “Don’t listen to them.”

⁹But the Holy Spirit was with Paul, and gave him power. He looked straight at Elymas

¹⁰and said, “You are just like the devil. You are full of lies and bad tricks. You try to stop everything that is good. You try to change God’s true story and you lie about him, trying to trick people. Are you ever going to stop doing that?