Monday,
March 20, 2023
Don’t put your
confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there. When they breathe their last, they
return to the earth, and all their plans die with them. But joyful are those who have the God of
Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God. Psalm 146:3-6
So Ananias went and
found Saul. He laid his hands on him and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus,
who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you might regain your sight
and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Instantly something
like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he got up and was baptized. Afterward
he ate some food and regained his strength.
Saul stayed with the believers in Damascus for a few days. And
immediately he began preaching about Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is
indeed the Son of God!” Acts 9:17-20
Saul (who was later renamed Paul) was a somebody, who, like
Moses, raised in the household of Pharaoh as a prince, learned to be a
nobody. And once Saul found out
the truth, that placing your trust and pinning your hopes on powerful people is
useless, like Moses, Paul went on to become one of God’s most useful servants
to proclaim the Good News that Christ is Lord.
Saul’s conversion backstory is that he was extremely well-educated, and
quite powerfully-connected to the powers that be. He was close enough to the movers and shakers
in Jerusalem to be entrusted with leading the charge against the new sect of
heretics…the Christians. He was
persecuting the church with a vengeance.
Then came that blinding light on the Road to Damascus. That light was Jesus.
Saul had been (as Scripture indicates) …uttering threats with every
breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers.[1] Suddenly the entire focus of Saul’s
life and purpose turned around…180°! Now
his mouth ceased threatening to kill Jesus’ followers, and began inviting those
who had been lost to have their eyes opened.
The “scales” covering Saul’s eyes, had fallen away to reveal Paul…the
great apostle, whose hand God used to give us one-third of the New Testament Scriptures. Paul had thought he was a somebody
when he was persecuting the nobodies. When Ananias, one of those nobodies, prayed
for Saul, the scales fell off his eyes, and Paul not only saw his errant
ways…he began to do something about it.
I was converted at a young age, and did next-to-nothing about telling the
Good News. In fact, I ran from it,
becoming self-centered and anything but a good witness. It took a Damascus Road event in my life to
turn me around. If there is a regret to
my life, it is that I did not share Christ with nearly as many people as God
gave me opportunity. One of my constant
prayers is now:
O God, open my mouth like Paul!
For You Today
Three suggestions about that:
1.
You
can have one of those face-to-face moments with Jesus…just ask Him.
2.
Don’t
resist the urgency to share the Good News…ever!
3.
Let
the scales drop, my friend…let ‘em drop!
There are about 2,500 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper explore
some of these: The Patience of God with Spiritual
Blindness and I Think I'm Having Stress
Title Image: Pietro da Cortona, via Wikimedia Commons Images without
citation are in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted
from The New Living Translation©
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