Daily Devotional
There are accounts of personal encounters with God sprinkled throughout the Bible. This week we will spend time looking at some of those accounts and exploring how God spoke to ordinary people – like you and me.
Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains.
As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?”
“Who are you, lord?” Saul asked.
And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
Saul thought what he was doing was the right thing. He was convinced that this “Jesus” was a threat to his faith and His God. He totally missed that they were one and the same – until Jesus spoke up. When Saul heard from God his life was changed forever. He went from persecuting those who followed Jesus to one who couldn’t stay quiet about what God had done to redeem us and show us His love.
I wonder how many times in our lives we are convinced that our actions or our words are the right thing – perhaps out of pride or stubbornness, or selfishness – that we totally miss that we are actually hurting our relationship with Jesus?
Let’s pray and ask God to identify the things we hold unto so tightly with a self-righteous and stubborn heart. Ask God to show us who He is in those things and how He would have us behave – and then to give us a desire to share that with everyone we know.
