If you have a chapter of your life you wish you could erase, a season when you were certain you were right and were wounding people in the name of God, then you are walking near Paul. This is the life of a Pharisee who hunted the church and became its most tireless servant, a man who carried a thorn he was never delivered from, who wrote songs of joy from a Roman prison, and who learned, slowly and painfully, that grace is sufficient and power is made perfect in weakness. Paul is not the proof that good people get rewarded. He is the proof that grace finishes what it begins, even in someone who once held the coats of the men who killed Stephen.
Insight
Biography
Saul of Tarsus is born into a Roman-citizen Jewish family in a Greek-speaking university town in Cilicia, in the first years of the first century. He is trained as a tentmaker in his father's trade and sent to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel, the most respected rabbi of his generation. He becomes a Pharisee of the Pharisees, blameless under the law as the law was measured in his day, zealous for the traditions of his fathers, and convinced that the followers of the crucified Nazarene are a blasphemy that must be stopped.
Insight
Story journey
Walk it with him. First the courtyard outside the city, the dust on his sandals, the coats piled at his feet, Stephen praying as the stones came down. He approved of it. The text is unsparing. He went home that day believing he had served God.
Insight
Themes carried
What Paul carried is what you may be carrying. A past that will not let you forget. A weakness that does not lift no matter how hard you pray. A calling so large it would crush you if grace were not larger.
Insight
Reflection
Sit with the road to Damascus for a moment. Paul did not seek Jesus. Jesus stopped him. He was traveling in the wrong direction with great conviction, and the Lord cut across his path and called him by name. If you know someone who is far from God right now, and you cannot imagine what could possibly turn them, remember that the apostle to the Gentiles was, that morning, the chief enemy of the church. There is no one outside the reach of the voice that said, Saul, Saul.
Prayer
Father, I bring You my history. The chapters I wish I could erase, the people I wounded in seasons when I was certain I was right, the part of my story I keep apologizing for in my own heart. Do for me what You did for Paul. Stop me on the road if I am going the wrong way. Sit me down in the dark long enough to hear my name. Send someone like Ananias to call me brother.
I bring You the thorn that has not lifted. I have asked, more than three times. Teach me to hear Your answer as Paul heard it: My grace is sufficient. My power is perfected in weakness. Be enough for me inside the thing You have not removed.
Give me grace to finish. Not to be impressive. To be faithful. Walk me to the last sentence of my life with my hand in Yours, and let me, by mercy, say with him, I have kept the faith. In Jesus' name, amen.
Journal prompts
What part of my past do I keep apologizing for in my own heart even after God has forgiven me, and what would it look like to let Him re-purpose it instead of erase it?
What thorn have I asked the Lord to remove that He has not lifted, and what would change if I heard His answer as Paul did: My grace is sufficient for you?
If I knew today that I would finish faithfully, not impressively, what one ordinary obedience would I take up tomorrow with that quiet confidence?
When you are ready, sit with 2 Corinthians 12:9, walk into the Hope Room for shame or anxiety, or rest in the promise of Philippians 1:6. The grace that began the work in you is the same grace that walked Paul home.