A
Prisoner FOR God
As
he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed
around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do
you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. Acts 9:3-5
Luke gives us what is certainly Paul's own memories of his conversion.
I especially like the way Chapter nine of Acts begins...."meanwhile
Saul is breathingout murderous threats against followers of The Way."
Its sort like, "meanwhile, back on the farm."
The Holy Spirit is doing all kinds of amazing and wonderful things in
the lives of other...but meanwhile, Saul is getting meaner than ever.
Saul is a pharisee, a Biblical scholar, though a lay preacher. He is a
student of the great Gamaliel, the wise and moderate leader who has
just counelled restraint in dealing with the believers. Kind of makes
you wonder where Saul was on that day.
In any case, we read he has gone to the cheif priest to get arrest
warrants for Jews living abroad who are disciples of Jesus.
The legalities of this are strong enough. The high priest had total
religious power over Jews anywhere in the Roman world.
In a matter of religion, at least that this time in history, Rome would
not care, so Saul has a free hand.
He has apparently been wreaking havoc among believers in and around
Jerusalem, but now he is not satisifed with this, he is going to hunt
fugitives down as far as he can travel. And so he gets a posse together
and heads out for Damascus, to hunt belivers, dead or alive.
His hatred is almost to the point we could call him out of control. Or
maybe more like the SS in the second world war hunting Jews wherever
they could.
He has a posse of deputized helpers. We dont know how many, but perhaps
enough to escort a small group back to Jerusalem.
As they near Damascus, about a four day trip in those days, he is
blinded by a dazzling light and falls to the ground.
He hears a voice asking, "Saul, Saul, why are you persucting me?"
He answeres, "Who are you?"
The voice answers, "I am Jesus who you are persecutiing. Now go into
Damascus and wait there."
We are told he is led by the hand into Damascus to await what God has
in mind for him.
Picture the irony.
The man who came to take others prisoner, is now himself being led, a
virtual prisoner of God.
Later in his life, Paul as he is renamed, calls himself a "prisoner for
Christ"
In fact much of his writing is done from prison.
He is a literal physical prisoner muchof the time, but all of the time
he chooses to be a prisoner for Christ.
God has taken this stubborn, self willed man and turned his life inside
out.
He is carrying arrest warrants, but it is he who is arrested by God.
There are times when God arrests us in our tracks. Stops us stone cold.
We do not always recognize the hand of God in those events.
We may recognize the influence of others, or of our bodies, or of time
or circumstance. But do we always see where God is at work.
Saul had no choice but to see. God makes it clear to him who is doing
the arresting.
Life sometimes gives us lemons. The popular saying is use them to make
lemonade or lemon pie.
That, while it may be true in some contexts is a bit too pie- in- the-
sky for my tastes.
Jesus teaches us what to do.
He says, suppose someone compels you to carry a burden a mile, carry it
two.
Someone wants your sweater, give him your coat too.
When life, or God in life, arrests us through circumstance, what do we
do?
Do we kick like fury against the restraints? In some cases that
may be appropriate.
In other cases it is missing the point.
Jesus is saying that an imposition on your life can be cause for
looking at it differently.
A burden carried under protest, or resentment feels not like one mile,
but ten.
A burden carried out of love is no burden at all.
"He ain't heavy, he's my brother"
How do you make the mental shift?
Life sends you a curve ball or a dead end, or just a heavy load to
carry.
You can resent it every day you have to deal with it.
You can become a prisoner OF something, and live your life in
resentment or just dull fatalism.
Or as in Jesus illustration, you can choose to be a prisoner FOR
something.
Paul became the prisoner FOR Christ, not OF Christ.
We age and our bodies will not let us do what we used to.
We can let our infirmities trap us, or we can live for Christ through
them.
How?
By mentally offering them to God.
You begin by reaffirming every day, that life is not meant to please
you. You are meant to please God.
That is is HUGE mental shift.
It's no longer about whether I find pleasure in it.
Its about whether God finds pleasure in me.
Once I make that shift, I can let go of all the things I think I need
for life to be pleasureable for me.
I can mentally just offer that back to God every day.
"God, its not about me. It's about you. Here I am, difficulties and
all. Use me as you wish. Show me what you want from me, and give me the
means to do it. Amen"
Think of all the lives of those who lived with enormous difficulties,
but whose light shone through.
Often it is not in spite of their affliction or difficulty, it is
because of it.
Helen Keller would just have been another blind lady had she not chosen
to offer her affirmity to God and live FOR God in it.
She could have turned bitter, but she did not.
Henri Nouwen puts it this way:
It would be just another illusion to
believe that reaching out to God will free us from pain and suffering.
Often, indeed, it will take us where we rather would not go. But we
know that without going there we will not find our life.1.
To what are you a prisoner?
If you are not a prisoner FOR Christ, you are held by something else.
It may be unresolved childhood issues, it may be obessions or
compulsions, it may be anger or bitterness, it may be the desire to
please, or be pleased.
The list is endless.
Find freedom.
Abandon all those other issues that can be tyrants and be a prisoner
FOR Christ.
Every day offer your life as it is in His service and let go of the
other things.
That is the only burden thats worth carrying.
And not everyone has an experience like Saul on the road to Damascus.
Listen to the story of Washington Gladden:
He was a preacher at the turn of the century. and he was as well known
in that day as Billy Graham is known in ours. He grew up in a very
Christian community, and he had learned well that a person needed to
find peace with God and experience the new birth. But that experience
seemed to elude him.
He went to every revival meeting that came along and listened intently
to the preachers and followed their instructions. He went to prayer
meeting every week and listened with interest to all the testimonies
that were shared, and he tried to lay hold of that experience that so
many other people seemed to have found. But night after night in his
early life, he would go to bed in the attic room of his father's
farmhouse having sought but not found. And certainly he didn't have the
kind of feelings that seemed to be present in all the people who were
giving their testimonies.
His soul continued to be troubled, and his mind continued to be
distressed. Then he met a clear-minded preacher who had the sense to
tell him that the faith of a Christian is not a matter of feeling; it's
a matter of faith. It's a matter of making a decision, submitting the
will and trusting Christ to make the difference. If you've done that,
said that clear-headed preacher, you don't have to experience the
raptures and the ecstasies that these other people experience. If
you're walking as Jesus walked, you can trust him to show you the way.
Washington Gladden began to do that, to walk in Jesus' way, and he
became the most noted preacher in the latter twenty years of the
previous century and the first ten years of this century. More than any
other person, he brought the application of the gospel to the social
issues of the day and shaped the church. It is no wonder that Gladden
could write the hymn we'll sing for a closing hymn after a while:
"O Master, let me walk with thee
In lowly paths of service free
Tell me thy secret, help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care."2.
He had found the door in loving service to his neighbor.
He found that he had to choose to be a prisoner for Christ by faith.
Only then did his life really find its freedom.
Find freedom.
Be a prisoner for Christ.
Preached
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian
Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1.Henri Nouwen in Reaching Out. Christianity Today,
Vol. 31, no. 10.
2. Maxie Dunnam, "I Am the Door," Preaching Today,
Tape No. 53
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