Acts #25 - The Road to Damascus

Acts 9:1-19 (NIV)
Read by: Kathy Haug

What events in your life were most significant in shaping your spiritual life today?

In today’s episode, we journey with Paul on the road to Damascus. Now, within the narrative of Acts, the only thing that we know about Paul is that his Jewish name is Saul, and he was there approving of the stoning execution of Stephen. So in order to fully appreciate the story that Luke gives us today, we need to understand a little bit more about Saul, and that comes from other writings.

We learn from Paul’s letters, and from who he becomes in the rest of the Acts narrative that at the time that he’s traveling on this road, is among a sect of the Jews called the Pharisees. This group was dead set with their zeal and fervor to keeping Israel pure and in right standing with God. Saul was traveling around Judea arresting followers of Jesus and seeing to their deaths if necessary. All for the sake of defending the faith and honoring Yahweh.

Pharisees like Saul were known for a form of prayer that modeled itself after Ezekiel’s vision of God’s heavenly chariot. They would meditate on this image and work their way up from the wheels to the chariot to the shining being hoping to see the face of God. And Saul sees a face that he was not expecting. Many refer to this as a conversion of Saul, but really this was a radical convergence, of all that Paul believed in the person of Jesus. His whole world gets flipped upside down.

----------REFLECT----------

1. What moment in this passage stirred you the most?

2. Saul thought that he was acting out of righteousness, defending the holiness and purity of God’s people. And in this moment he’s literally blinded as he’s exposed by the truth that Jesus is the very righteousness that he has so longed for. Have you ever been acting or living or believing one way, only for God to turn that inside out and upside down?

3. God calls Annanias to go to Saul. Now think about what Annanias knows. All he knows is that Saul is the one who’s been traveling around persecuting Christians. And God calls him to go where he is and Annanias calls him brother?! If you knew that God was working in the life of someone who you would consider an enemy, would you go to them?

Lord, we ask that you reveal yourself to us. Turn over the things that we have wrong about who you are, and use us in the lives of those for whom you’re turning things over.

----------GO DEEPER----------

Bible Project: Acts 1-12 Overview >>

InterVarsity Press Selections: Acts >>

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