Good Morning Friends,
If you think your past is keeping you from a future of serving God, think again. The past may be preparing it for you. Just look at the life of Paul, also known as Saul. If you are saved. If you are fully surrendered. If you are all in. If you are available and willing to be used. The past is the past. There are some things we should postpone. But I cannot think of a good reason for delaying this walk in the Way. So, are we ready to commit or are we waiting? God is in the small things and God is in the big things. Still God encounters look different for each one of us. Some of us were raised in the faith and some have a life altering event that marks a transition. Tradition has it that one must repent of sin and believe in the Gospel to be a Christian. But this does not make one a Christian alone and frankly may not even be the first step though an important part of the journey. If God knew us in the womb, then who is to say when our second birth begins as part of our first with the family, we are born into. Maybe it is with a star and maybe it is with a lightning bolt but the process of how the light of Christ comes to us is a bit of a mystery. If infants are rightfully baptized without memory of the event, maybe the way of salvation exists outside of our consciousness and in the Body of Christ in unity with us. Certainly, one needs the Holy Spirit and traditionally this gift of a relationship with God is received when one repents and is baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins. But that puts the decision in our hands more than God’s. My experience is that the gift of the Holy Spirit can come whenever and wherever God wills. The true conversion begins when we choose to follow and fight the good fight in a process of transformation that renews our minds and proves that the good and acceptable and perfect will of God has turned us away from sin and to seek the Kingdom of God which begins anew each and every day until we die. Conversion is not complete until we are with Jesus in heaven. Still, if we are on the fence we may want to turn to the Good Book for directions. So, What Does The Bible Tell Us About How We Might Experience Conversion And Why So Many Try To Avoid It?
Scripture: Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. “The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?” Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah.
Acts 9:1-22 (NRSV)
“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today. I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me. From them I also received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I went there in order to bind those who were there and to bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. “While I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Then he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.’ Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. I asked, ‘What am I to do, Lord?’ The Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go to Damascus; there you will be told everything that has been assigned to you to do.’ Since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, those who were with me took my hand and led me to Damascus. “A certain Ananias, who was a devout man according to the law and well spoken of by all the Jews living there, came to me; and standing beside me, he said, ‘Brother Saul, regain your sight!’ In that very hour I regained my sight and saw him. Then he said, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear his own voice; for you will be his witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard. And now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.’
Acts 22:3-16 (NRSV)
And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Mark 16:15-18 (NRSV)
to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being,
Galatians 1:16 (NRSV)
Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples! For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!
Psalm 117:1-2 (NRSV)
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations. Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have given heed to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. I declare that I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.’
Exodus 3: 1-17 (NRSV)
Message: Aside from Jesus, Paul is one of the most influential people in all of history. But I doubt that was how Paul saw it. Every time I think about Paul’s conversion, I am amazed at the grace of God but also the way of life of the Christian and the creative purpose within each of us that allows a 180-degree transformation to occur. The stories of conversion are set forth multiple times in the Bible in different contexts. We see it in Chapter 9 and 26 in the book of Acts as recorded by Luke in an historical narrative (though it was not a firsthand account) and in Acts 22 a defense of the conversion echoed in the book of Galatians by Paul himself. And we have the story of the burning bush and Moses. This morning’s devotional is not designed to harmonize these accounts even though they do complement each other, but instead to help us face the reality here that conversion is possible only because God has removed our transgression from us and set them as far away as the east is from the west. Yes, it is about the Holy Spirit but not this power alone. Conversion is not just the presence of God but an activation of transformation. So, friends, if there was hope for Paul, there is hope for us too, for Paul was a very unlikely candidate for the service of the Christian faith. He was hated by Christians and did everything in his power to destroy the name of Jesus. Yet God reached down in grace and took this man from where he was and used him to change the world. Now we may think that we are not worthy, but the thing is that God can and will use us anyway if we just show up and make ourselves available. Our present circumstances need not be a problem. Our weakness is not a problem for God. God can still use us to confound the strongest of those enemies in our lives. God can take our lives and make them an inspiration for others if we are willing to be part of God’s continuing act of creation and redemption.
And So, we need to encounter God to have a conversion. We can wrestle, worship, and work in service. We can wail about our situation, make wishes and wonder. But finally, we need to have a legitimate “Come to Jesus” conversation with God about whether we are all in or not. God gives us a choice. We may not see flashes of lightning or hear an audible voice, but we will be given moments that can help to grow in the faith of Jesus in a way that is more than a healthy imagination. The thing is that we are to take our experiences with God seriously and be a good steward of these moments. We need to realize that we can belong to all sorts of organizations but first we must belong to Jesus. So, stay curious and humble and faithfully seek these encounters and get to the true heart of life’s issues. Friends, this is about repenting and getting clean and being transformed and it happens and continues to happen to make us into something new in Christ worth sharing with others reborn each and every day.
Pray we realize that having an encounter with Christ is not the same as a conversion. Pray our motives are pure. Pray we see the logic of making a commitment. Pray we realize that Paul was not an enthusiast who was given to an overheated imagination but was a disciplined logical scholar of the first magnitude. Pray
we approach the mystery of the unknown with the intention of using our life as an instrument of the Spirit of God. Pray we have people like Ananias to help interpret for us our experiences in a Christian context but also be open to God speaking to us in the mystery of the faith. Pray we submit to being saved. Pray we have our blinders removed. Pray we embrace life as a purposeful journey that God makes straight. Pray we receive the gift of sight in the light to see God’s will for our lives. Pray we embrace the Way as not just an interpretation of what evil and suffering is about but also as a Way of life allowing us to join in the creative work of the Holy Spirit in the Stream of Holy History. Pray we immerse ourselves in the baptism of the Spirit with repentance and forgiveness shared in love. Pray our conversions are wonderfully illustrative of the crucial elements of the Lord’s plan for human redemption. Pray we have a whole turn to God. Pray we have the presence of mind to realize we had better do what is right and stop doing what is wrong. Pray we experience the Burning Bush of God’s Holy Spirit Fire.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 