Please hold up your hand if you’ve ever been in a tough spot and desperate. It’s not that you held your hand up that matters, everyone should’ve held their hand up, it’s how high you held it up. Everyone that’s more than half human should recognize we don’t need help getting into trouble; most of us can get in over our head without any professional help. Getting into trouble is no problem, getting out is where the mental acuity goes into overdrive causing multifaceted compound double-jointed stress.
In the New Testament people were constantly getting into trouble. Not the kind of trouble normally associated with breaking the law or offending the Romans who happened to be the occupying army de jour. The kind of trouble people were getting into was an esoteric belief in a traveling evangelist; thereby creating a maelstrom of anger by one man, one very religious man commonly known as Saul of Tarsus. Saul was persecuting the people who chose to follow this upstart evangelist named Jesus. Saul was a first rate Pharisee, a first rate Bible scholar, and a first rate hunter of newly minted Christians. Saul was intense and sincere. Saul genuinely believed that this new Christian movement was dangerous to Judaism. Saul took it upon himself to tip the scales and persecuted Christians without mercy.
Saul received permission from the authorities to travel to Damascus to capture Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem for questioning and trial. God intervened! Saul met Jesus Christ on the Damascus road and his life changed forever. Saul was walking a tightrope persecuting Christians. He could have very easily been assassinated by someone had God not stopped him in his tracks on the Damascus road. When he met Jesus, no other person had to change so much so fast. God had great plans for Saul. Saul worked tirelessly to convince the Jews that Gentiles were loved by God. He spent just as much time convincing Gentiles that they were loved by God. This person walking a tightrope was to become the ultimate example of change and obedience and transformation.
No person, apart from Jesus himself, shaped the history of Christianity like the apostle Paul. Paul’s personal encounter with Jesus changed his entire life. God did not waste any part of Paul—his background, his training, his citizenship, his mind, or his fierce intensity to preach the gospel. Are you willing to let God do the same for you? You will never know all he can do with you until you allow him to have all that you are! 1 John 3:16 says it this way, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” In Philippians 1:21-24 Paul says confidently that dying would be better than living because in death he would be removed from worldly troubles, and he would see Christ face-to-face.
Bottom line
If you’re not ready to die, then perhaps you’re not ready to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment