Life Changing Encounters

Encounters with Jesus change people.  Actually, change may be the wrong word.  The Apostle wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians church, "So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new."  (II Corinthians 5:17)  One of the great stories of life changing encounters with Jesus shows up in the ninth chapter of Acts.  Saul of Tarsus, "still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord," (Acts 9:1) was on his way to Damascus to find believers in Christ and take them bound back to Jerusalem.  At this moment in his life all his energies were directed toward wiping the Jesus movement from the face of the earth.  He was one of the first major antagonist to the spreading message of Jesus.

 

However, as we read that chapter, we do not see the antagonism and hatred being softened , or moderated, but eradicated.  The antagonist became something new.  He became the chief advocate of Jesus in that first century world.  On the way to Damascus he encountered Jesus and in that moment everything upon which his life was built melted away and he was left with nothing but the realization of a misdirected life.  As Saul was struggling to pick himself up off the road midst that blinding light, he heard a voice saying, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.  But, get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." (Acts 9:5-6)  With the help of others, he got himself up and did what the voice of Jesus told him to do.

 

Something totally new came into being out there on that road.  The blind man that had to be led into the city was totally new.  He had never before been who he was in that moment of going.  It is always that way with any of us who encounter the Christ and who choose to walk away from that encounter intent on doing His bidding.  What we become is not something we ever imagined ourselves being.  Anyone who has had such a moment knows the truth of being made new and those who are on the front side of such an encounter are only a step away from a moment which can make them not better, but new.