6/13/2021 - Changed! - Acts 9

Acts chapter nine records the most significant event in the history of the church since the coming of the Holy Spirit. The apostles' teaching that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah has blistered and enraged Jewish leadership. A short while ago, a man named Stephen preached Jesus to this stiff necked crowd. The mob is unable to refute his logic and they murder him under the authority of the Sanhedrin. There is one notable man present. A Pharisee-trained young man from Tarsus, the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia. He kept watch over the event and became inspired. He won the chief priests' permission to hunt Jesus-followers in Jerusalem. He imprisoned them, voted that they be executed, and tried to force them to blaspheme. In response, the Jesus-followers fled Jerusalem, scattering over Judea, Samaria, and as far as Syrian Antioch, not too far from Tarsus. Along the way, they discovered that God's salvation is for more than the Jews. The Holy Spirit came on Samaritans and an Ethiopian government official who worshiped the Jewish God…and he was a eunuch. Formerly, these men were excluded from the worship of God. Not anymore. Truly, Jesus is for everyone.

The young Pharisee would become famous by writers referring to him as Paul. He personally encountered the resurrected Jesus and was forever changed. He would go on to become the most successful church planter of all time. The hunter has become the hunted. His peers want him dead. He is after all, a traitor. But Paul would use his zeal for Jesus. In other words, he became a sanctified version of himself. He didn’t change his “foot on the gas" ways. He simply turned the car in a new direction. How about you? Are you thinking you have to be someone you’re not. No one can be you better than you. So be yourself for God’s glory and you’ll discover what you were truly designed to do.