Paul: Hero

Acts 9:19-31

            I suppose the first line here really caught my attention, and after taking some food, he regained his strength, because that is the course I am currently on.  Trying to recover my strength and come back in line with the energy and zest for life I am known for. Beyond that however, the passage becomes quite familiar, one I have head many times before. What of this man named Paul?

      Paul is a rebel and hero. He does not let that fact that the early church does not trust him stop him, deservedly so, he was a persecutor of Christians. He does not let  guilt over what he has done in the past keep him from proclaiming the Good News. Paul is proclaiming the Good News in an area and time that is not always conducive to that message.

         How many of us have the guts to admit we are wrong or have the zeal to push forward in faith in spite of what others may be telling us. Now before you go all Pentecostal on me, I'm not speaking of a message derived from secret knowledge or one person's erroneous interpretation of scripture. I'm talking mainline Christian beliefs,  love, forgiveness and hope

     Yes Paul is hero just as much as anyone who marches to a different and more inclusive message derived from Christ's message. There is no limit on God's love, we should want to go out and proclaim it.

            

and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’ All who heard him were amazed and said, ‘Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?’ Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah.

After some time had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night so that they might kill him; but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.

When he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. He spoke and argued with the Hellenists; but they were attempting to kill him. When the believers learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.