Devotional by Mike Uhlig

“In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’”

Acts 26:12-18

The focus of todays devotional will be with verses 16-18. As we have already learned, Paul had quite a miraculous conversion. He went from using his Roman authority to persecute Christians to then becoming a devout follower of Jesus, the very person he was persecuting, through a dramatic conversion event where He heard the Lord's voice and was blinded for 3 days. As you may have noticed, yesterday’s devotional used the name Saul, and today I am using the name Paul. That is because God gave Paul his new name, in Acts 13:9, under the new identity of a child of God. 2 Corinthians 5:17 states “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

As we compare Paul’s conversion to our own personal conversion story and appreciate the new life we have in Christ especially in sharp contrast to our former lives, Christ doesn’t want us to merely stay in gratitude. Rather, our gratitude should lead us to do something about with it. That is: to share it. Which brings us to verses 16-18: “But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

God had a purpose in Saul’s past and He used the conversion of Saul to Paul to then take him, his new servant, into the darkness from which he came to be a light.

Today’s objective is to ask God who are the people in my former life that have seen my conversion that God may be leading me to go and “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith”?