Crazy Enough… Yes we are!
Today we are crazy enough to call on our 911 scripture… Acts 9:11
God mixed things up… with this one… shuffled the deck… made some changes… didn’t act the way people expected Him to act. What happened?
The notorious Saul of Tarsus, a professional Hebrew law follower, was hot on the trail of some Christ-followers. He was on his way to arrest them, torture them and kill some of them. Saul of Tarsus was an arrogant hunter of Christ-followers. He wanted them crushed and stomped out of existence.
God could have simply crushed Saul. God could have simply killed him or crippled him or shamed him or punished him or taken him off the path. Yes… God could have. But God did something really strange… really crazy. God forgave Saul. Yes, He did. God forgave Saul and Saul submitted to God, admitting that Jesus really was God’s Son (the Messiah) who died on the cross for the sins of the world… and all those who chose to submit to Him would become children of God. That is what God did… He became Saul’s savior. And Saul became the very person he was hunting down and killing. Now that is CRAZY!
To humble Saul, God made him blind but not before He allowed Saul to see and speak with Jesus, God Himself.
Soon after, God sent a messenger to Saul to get Saul started with this new life, this second chance, this new journey. God did some crazy things. Let’s look at our 911 scripture for this week.
Acts 9:11 (NIV) “The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.”
The messenger arrives and gets Saul started.
Look how God used some VERY creative and VERY effective and VERY relevant methods to make these changes. God chooses to take the most feared Christian hunter and convert him to a Christ-follower. God strikes him blind. God gets up in his face and does business with him. And then God sends a Christ-follower to go and speak to this former Christ-follower hunter (which made this guy super frightened… what if Saul were faking it to catch more Christ-followers?!?). These things were crazy and the people involved were crazy enough to take part in God’s amazing plan.
God uses the nervous messenger to give Saul his sight back.
God changes Saul’s name to Paul.
God sends Paul out to surround himself with strong believers to teach and train Paul.
Then God sends Paul out to become the most effective church starter that has ever lived.
Wow… God was crazy enough to trust a former Christ-follower hating, Christ-follower hunting, Christ-follower killing man to start churches to fill cities with new Christ-followers.
It is Paul that would go on to become the most effective church planter in history. This is where it started. What a strange way to reach the world…
Now for us…
Leave your comfort… your normal… the way you have been doing things. God might be ready to change things up and do some crazy stuff… like… using us to reach our communities… and even using us to reach other communities in Arkansas.
Now for us…
Maybe we too, Stuttgart Harvest Church, are to go to a new place… learn the cultural language of the people living there… teach them the good news of Jesus in their cultural language (not your language, not your preference, not the way you are comfortable, not the way you learn or understand but the way they do).
So… For us… For Stuttgart Harvest Church… Let’s pray about the crazy…
And ask God to do some crazy stuff with us… to go and create relevant environments for people to connect with Christ and grow toward Christlikeness.
“A big Wooo Hooo for what God do!”
