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Paul and Grace

Acts 26:15-18 15

‘Then I asked, “Who are you, Lord?”

‘“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” the Lord replied. 16 “Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what yu have seen and will see of me. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

Pain as a means of Grace

Sometimes we think of the word Grace as something warm and fuzzy but if we look at the how God intervened to work with Saul on the road to Damascus, we might be more inclined to use words like traumatic, violent, sudden, unexpected.

Lets look at Paul’s story. Because in it God ‘s use pain as a vehicle of Grace

• Saul didn’t see the pain coming. Acts 9:1-2 Saul saw himself as a passionate follower of Yahweh and stamping out Christians was a good thing. Old Testament supported the idea of killing heretics. Numbers 22:6-5, 1 kings 18:40
• God uses pain as tool of Grace : Acts 9:3-6 God rewired Saul’s entire thinking. He had to realize that it was the Christians and not he who were the real people of God
• God uses pain to humble Saul Acts 9:8-9  Saul loses  just about everything that he has , including the control over his life.
• Paul accepts help from the body of Christ Acts 9:10-17

Sometimes we can shy away from pain because we don’t see it as valuable. We want to fix it, to make it go away.  We also tend to shy away from people in pain because they make us uncomfortable.

But people in pain need support not judgement

So the big question is  WHY WOULD A GRACIOUS GOD USE PAIN TO TEACH ABOUT HIS LOVE?