Acts 9
The Person You'd Never Expect
"This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel." (Acts 9:15)
Saul was hunting Christians. Consenting to their deaths, dragging them out of houses, breathing threats. And then Jesus showed up on the road to Damascus and knocked him flat.
God’s response to Ananias’s hesitation is worth sitting with. Ananias essentially said: you know who this is, right? And God said: yes. He’s my chosen instrument.
The person Ananias least wanted to go find was the one God had already chosen for the work.
I’ve had to sit with my own list of people I’d written off. People who seemed too far gone, too hostile, too entrenched in the wrong direction. And Acts 9 keeps asking me: are you sure? Because the person who looks like the biggest obstacle to the mission sometimes turns out to be the one God had in mind all along.
Paul became the most prolific church planter and letter writer in the New Testament. His entire ministry was shaped by what he’d done before: he knew how to argue, how to suffer, how to think theologically, how to move from city to city. God used all of it. Even the part that looked like damage.
