This is My Story and I Am Sticking to It! - Acts 22

22 1 “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.” 2 When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet. Then Paul said: 3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.4 I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5 as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. 6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ 8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. “ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

The Roman commander, who arrested Paul and actually saved him from the mob that was seeking to kill him, gives Paul an opportunity to address the crowd. The crowd was made up of mostly Jews, who had been incited to riot by the Jews who came from Asia.  Paul recounts his testimony to all of them.  In his testimony we see several important major pieces.  This is Paul's story and he's "sticking to it".  

Paul begins by telling what he was like before he met Christ.  He was a zealous Jew, trained by the best rabbi Gamaliel, and he hunted down Christians to arrest and kill some of them.  In another verse Paul describes himself a "Pharisee of Pharisees", meaning he followed the law devoutly and demanded others to do so as well.  

Then, Paul tells about his supernatural encounter where Jesus know blinded him by the light and said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" At the time Paul probably did not understand the ramifications of this experience, but he did know it was Jesus of Nazareth. Paul is trying to meet the crowd where it is at and try to let them know that he is just like them. It is as if Paul said: “I was just like you all, until I had an encounter with Jesus. Jesus met me and my life was dramatically changed.”

Later Paul received back his sight and was sent to testify about Jesus to the Gentiles. At first, he wanted to go back to his fellow Jews thinking that he could testify of his conversion and since they knew that he was such a persecutor of Christians they would have to believe his testimony.  "Paul made it clear that it wasn’t his idea to preach to the Gentiles; this was God’s plan, not his. He hoped it also explained to the crowd why he seemed so friendly to the Gentiles: Paul was simply obeying Jesus and His word to him." But Jesus had a better plan.

What can we learn from Paul's model 

1. Our story, like Paul's, has a time when we did not know Jesus.  We all behaved in different ways. Perhaps some of us were very religous or zealous for our faith. Or, others just lived a life focused on ourselves.  

2. When we met Jesus we realized our old way of life was futile. We were empty and void of a real life purpose. It was then that we learned that Jesus had a much better plan for our lives.  We may not have had as dramatic of an experience as Paul had, but we knew something fundamentally about us had changed.  Many people call this experience as being "born again".  Though you are the same person, your life and mission has changed.  You are under new managment.  

3. Finally, though Paul thought he knew God's mission for him to preach to His fellow Jews, God had a better plan.  Many times after we have a strong experience of God's love through Jesus we can impulsively think this is what God wants me to do.  Not so fast! It might not be His plan for you.  But what is for sure is that God does have a plan for you.  God will use your testimony to reach others for Christ.  It may or may not be with your own family.  It may or may not be the people you grew up with.  

One of the joys I had recently was to reconnect with some friends I met in grade school back in the Midwest and graduated from high schoo with. They all live out here in Southern California, and we all reconnected to help another friend from high school, who got in a freak accident and had to have her leg amputated.  It was really cool how God used that experience to mix my new life as a pastor in California with some old friends from way back when.

Bottom line is God wants to use you.  And there is a good chance that who you were in your former life will be part of your testimony of what God has done in your life and what he can do in the life of others with a similar story.  After all God never wastes an experience.