Has God been putting up roadblocks in your path? Has he been making it impossible for you to "proceed with the route" you had in mind for your life? This can be really frustrating—especially when your plans revolved around pleasing God. Maybe you're feeling disillusioned or even angry—wondering what God is trying to do here.
If so, I think today's conversation is going to be incredibly helpful to you. We're looking at a Bible story where a man was utterly convinced that he was headed out to please God. He was on an upward trajectory, and was gaining momentum and honor. And yet Jesus stopped him in his tracks, and rerouted him to a life filled with so much more.
Ann Swindell
Guest: Ann Swindell
Bible Passage: Acts 9:1-9 ESV
Get your Freebie: The Live Like It's True Workbook
Mentioned Resources:
Music: Cade Popkin Music
Summer Standout Series
Today we're kicking off my Summer Standout series. Over the summer, I'm connecting with a handful of fellow Bible study authors who are releasing a new study, and so I've let them choose the story from the Bible that we'll be talking about. Also, each episode will include a giveaway. Scroll down for two ways to win.
Ann Swindell
Ann Swindell and her writing have been featured widely by The Gospel Coalition, Risen Motherhood, (in)courage, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and other publications. Ann lives in West Michigan with her pastor-husband and their children. Learn more at annswindell.com.
Find Ann:
Summer Giveaways!
You have two ways you can enter to win any of the Bible studies and books I'm giving away this summer, including a copy of Path to Peace.
Has God been putting up roadblocks in your path? Has he been making it impossible for you to "proceed with the route" you had in mind for your life? This can be really frustrating—especially when your plans revolved around pleasing God. Maybe you're feeling disillusioned or even angry—wondering what God is trying to do here.
If so, I think today's conversation is going to be incredibly helpful to you. We're looking at a Bible story where a man was utterly convinced that he was headed out to please God. He was on an upward trajectory, and was gaining momentum and honor. And yet Jesus stopped him in his tracks, and rerouted him to a life filled with so much more.
Ann Swindell
Guest: Ann Swindell
Bible Passage: Acts 9:1-9 ESV
Get your Freebie: The Live Like It's True Workbook
Mentioned Resources:
Music: Cade Popkin Music
Summer Standout Series
Today we're kicking off my Summer Standout series. Over the summer, I'm connecting with a handful of fellow Bible study authors who are releasing a new study, and so I've let them choose the story from the Bible that we'll be talking about. Also, each episode will include a giveaway. Scroll down for two ways to win.
Ann Swindell
Ann Swindell and her writing have been featured widely by The Gospel Coalition, Risen Motherhood, (in)courage, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and other publications. Ann lives in West Michigan with her pastor-husband and their children. Learn more at annswindell.com.
Find Ann:
Summer Giveaways!
You have two ways you can enter to win any of the Bible studies and books I'm giving away this summer, including a copy of Path to Peace.
Has God been putting up any roadblocks in your path lately? Has he been making it impossible for you to proceed with the root that you had in mind for your life? This can be really frustrating, especially when your plans revolved around pleasing God. Maybe you're feeling disillusioned or even angry, wondering what in the world God is trying to do here. If so, I think today's conversation is going to be incredibly helpful to you, because we're looking at a Bible story where a man was utterly convinced that he was headed out to please God, and yet Jesus stopped him in his tracks and re-rooted him to a life filled with so much more.
Speaker 1:Today we're kicking off my new Summer Standout series, so over the course of this summer, I'll be connecting with a handful of fellow Bible study authors who are releasing new books, and so I'm going to let them choose the story from the Bible that we will be talking about. I'm so delighted to have my new friend, anne Swindell, with me for this first conversation. So Anne has been featured widely by the Gospel Coalition, risen, motherhood, encourage, proverbs 31, and other publications. Anne lives here in West Michigan, right near me, with her pastor, husband and their children, so you can learn more about Anne at annswindellcom and be sure to listen to the end to learn how to win a copy of Anne's brand new book, the Path to Peace.
Speaker 1:So today's conversation was so rich and good, but it was also a little bit on the long side and, if you're like me, you don't always get to the end of a really great podcast. So I didn't want that to happen. I didn't want to shave off any little parts of it. I didn't want you to miss any of it. So what I've done is taken this conversation with Anne and divided it into two episodes. Both parts are equally fabulous. I know you're going to enjoy it, but I just kind of wanted you to know where we're headed. So today we're heading into part one of my conversation with Anne Swindell. Anne, it is so great to be with you today. Thanks for having me, shannon. I really appreciate it. I am so excited. We just found out we're like basically neighbors. We live in neighboring communities. Actually, jenison is a huge rival for our little community of Grandville.
Speaker 1:And I actually went to Grandville High School and they were rivals back then too, so that's amazing.
Speaker 2:But even so, we can still be friends. Good, I'm glad because I'm a transplant here, you know, so I won't claim the rivals down in my roots. But that's great, we'll be friends. No, those bridges, that's great. And where did you move from? Yeah, we came up from Texas, my husband's from Texas, and before that we were in Illinois and before that we were in St Louis. So we've been all over.
Speaker 1:Okay, You've made the rounds and your husband's a pastor, which is what brought you to. Is it Wellspring Community?
Speaker 2:Church Yep Wellspring Community Church in Hudsonville. He's a pastor on staff there.
Speaker 1:That's so great. Now we just did the Easter series back in the spring of 2022. And we just looked at one scene after another in the story of Jesus's death and resurrection, and the story we're going to talk about today comes right after the Easter series, and so it comes from the book of Acts. And who is the unlikely character in our story today?
Speaker 2:Ann, we're going to be reading about Saul, who we later know, and most of the Bible he refers to himself by his Gentile name of Paul, his Greek name. But yeah, we started out with Saul here in Acts 9.
Speaker 1:Yes, so he grew up in a Gentile community, tarsus, but he did have both names. I think that's interesting, that God was already weaving in his backgrounds. He was from a Jewish family, so he had the name Saul, like you know.
Speaker 2:Like King Saul. You know that we have in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:And he also has this Greek name, paul. He's from a tent maker family and Paul we'll just call him Paul. But he was like this, really engaged, like very passionate God following man right. Give us anything else that you want us to know about Paul, before we read a little bit of the story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Paul was. You know if, when you read through the Bible, you learn more about his lineage and his background? I mean, if he was a Jew of Jews, he had all of the credentials, he had all of the training, he had all of the generational lineage, things that he could point to and say I have all this important standing in my community and culturally. So he, saul, was a very well-credentialed man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, If I remember correctly, he studied under. Is it Gamaliel, Gamaliel, Gamaliel? Yeah, so he was. You know that was an elite like rabbi school. He must have been selected as a child. He was probably really very smart.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, had all of the markers of what they would have been looking for in young men who could cut it, you know, in the rabbinical training.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and you know, I think we've come to think of Pharisees. You know, paul was a Pharisee. We've come to think of them as the bad guys, but in that day they were really seen as the good guys.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because they were the religious leaders of the day and we could back up and go into part of why Jesus was so frustrated with them. Instead of making the pathway to God easy and clear, they had muddied the waters for the Jewish people, but it was still considered a position of extremely high renown and in most of the Jewish communities, would have been seen as this is the top of the tops. You know, you've reached the epitome of what it means to be a Jewish man. If you are a Pharisee, yeah.
Speaker 1:If you were a friend of Paul, you would have dropped his name. You know, if you were a name dropper you would have. Like you, he's a celebrity. Yeah, you would have just felt honored to know him. He would have been highly esteemed and he really did set himself apart. Like the Pharisees, they were very set apart in many ways. They wanted what God wanted. They wanted for people to love the law and follow the law. But when Jesus entered the scene, paul is not somebody that we would have expected to be excited about Jesus, to follow him, because of this sort of like rivalry between the Pharisees and Jesus.
Speaker 2:Well, and what they saw is in their minds. Jesus was heretical because he was saying all of these things about God that just flew in the face of the, not the actual word. Jesus never said anything that went against the actual word of God, but they had made all of these rules and regulations around the Torah, around the books of you know, the Old Testament, and so the Pharisees had created their own laws. And Jesus comes in and actually gets back to the heart of what God was aiming for through his word, but in the process it disrupts all of these rabbinical laws that these men over time had created. And you know, jesus said basically, you're tying up heavy burdens, placing them on people and making it harder for them.
Speaker 2:In many ways, it wasn't Paul's fault. He was part of a culture that was telling him this is what it takes to walk with God. But the way of Christ and the way that he so radically ate with sinners and hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors and called the poor to himself and chose disciples who were not learned men, jesus was disrupting this pattern and they were so mad at him that they eventually ended up killing him for it. And yet the gospel could not be silenced. As you know, through your Easter series, we know like even death could not hold him.
Speaker 1:It could not, which is so exciting. Yes and so, and I love. At the beginning of the book of acts it says something to the effect of like in my former book is the works of Jesus, and now they are continuing because Jesus is alive.
Speaker 1:And so acts is a continuation of all of these works of Jesus, and now we're going to see him work in this very unlikely character named Paul. Yes, something's going to happen that is going to completely upturn Paul's life and turn him in a completely different direction. So we're going to pick up this story. In Acts, chapter nine, would you be willing to read verses one through two? And we're going to read from the ESV translation Yep.
Speaker 2:But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for the letters to the synagogues of Damascus so that if you found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the first time we heard of Paul was back when Stephen was being stoned. Right, stephen was a follower of the way I love that it calls it the way here, yep. And so it says that he approved of this. And so now he's still breathing threats and murders against the disciples of the Lord. Yes, and that sounds kind of cold hearted, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:It seems to me, as a reader, that this has become his obsession. He is determined to root them out and put them in prison because he wants to silence the message of Jesus Christ. He is obsessed, committed to and completely focused on getting rid of these Jesus followers.
Speaker 1:Yes, he is sincere, he's devoted and he is convinced he is doing the right thing, absolutely, and he's not okay with we're just going to track him down here in Jerusalem. He wants to take this passion and commitment. Yeah, he wants to take it to the road. He wants to go to Damascus. So it's like I just picture him like breathing under his breath like oh these Christians, these followers of the way.
Speaker 1:He's just, he is obsessed, and so he gets special permission to get letters to go to these synagogues. Tell us what a synagogue is.
Speaker 2:A synagogue would have been. I mean, it's not a perfect correlation, but you know we have churches as Christians. Synagogues would have been the meeting places for Jewish people to worship and to gather, and so he was going to his places of leadership in their Jewish community, asking for permission to not just arrest people in Jerusalem or to stand by as they're stoned and approve it, but to get people from other synagogues who have, in his mind, gone rogue by following Jesus, so that he can round them up too. Right.
Speaker 1:So he's going to, he's picturing. I'm going to show up in this town, I'm going to go and present these papers to the leaders in the synagogue and I'm going to, I'm going to scout it out, like, who are the followers of the way? Maybe, perhaps they're meeting on Sunday, because that's that would have been a way that they differentiated. Or perhaps they're coming to the synagogue and they're talking about Jesus and they're not against Jesus. Like I'm going to round them up, I'm going to I don't know if he's picturing a hand cupping them.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but it's also interesting that the scripture says men or women. You would think, okay, like if you're a dude, fine, go after the men, but to take out the women too. I mean, this is there's a ruthlessness in Paul, and I do think it's driven by this fanaticism to kind of keep his concept of what following God means pure. But he has lost a vision for what truth actually is, because he refuses to see Jesus for who he is, and so that has blinded him and he is going to go after men or women. He was committed to taking them to jail.
Speaker 1:Right, I loved in our episode with Erica van Heidsma she talks about how women did have certain freedoms, like at the foot of the cross, like the women could be there, where the men would be carried off, but the women, they didn't have as much danger associated with them being present. But here I mean, you're exactly right, paul has taken this to a new level of obsession, and I love that. You said he's blinded, because isn't that interesting? Because we're going to see something about blindness coming up here but he's blinded, really, to who Jesus is. Yeah, absolutely. He is convinced, I think, of two things. He's convinced that Jesus was not the Messiah. He absolutely believed that a Messiah was coming, but a suffering Messiah, a Messiah who was dishonorably put to death and across like, no, not that Messiah, that is not what Paul and the other religious leaders had in mind. And also, he does not see Jesus as being resurrected. He thinks that's a lie, right, yep.
Speaker 2:It's a lie perpetuated by his elders, by the other leaders, their seas and Sadducees. I mean, they're paying off guards to keep them silence about what really happened, you know? So, yeah, this is the community he's in, the leadership he's around are all reinforcing the belief that Christ Jesus is not the Messiah and that anyone who follows him has lost their marbles.
Speaker 1:Essentially, so we can just kind of picture him on the road headed to Damascus and let's pick up the story. Could you read it? Versus three through nine, yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven shown around him and, falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him Saul, saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said who are you, lord? And he said I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city and you will be told what to do. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus and for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.
Speaker 1:So we have this phenomenon that confronts Paul. What does he see Like? What's unique about what he sees?
Speaker 2:Well, I think what is important for us to note is that this is truly a supernatural moment for Paul. It says you know, suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. This was not a random shaft of the sun that hit him in the face, this was not the weather changing. This was a beam of light from heaven, from the King of heaven himself, shining around him. And obviously we don't know what it looked like. But when we think about the brilliance of Jesus and some of the images we have of him in Revelation, we can imagine that it would have been awe-inspiring and very frightening. I mean, he falls to the ground immediately. When this happens, there's no standing in this presence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it falls immediately on his knees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the transfiguration when you know, Jesus' glory is unveiled. So I don't know, maybe this is even the face of Jesus shining from heaven. I don't know, but it's the light from heaven. And you're exactly right. He can't stand, he falls to the ground. And what does the voice say?
Speaker 2:The voice says Saul, saul, why are you persecuting me?
Speaker 1:So what is surprising about these words here, Ian?
Speaker 2:Well, I think. First the speaker does not identify himself first, right, the first thing we get is light. Saul bam is on the ground. And then why are you persecuting me?
Speaker 1:Right, and I also think it's interesting that Jesus calls out that he's persecuting him, because we would think that Paul is persecuting Christians.
Speaker 1:They're followers of Jesus, but I find something comforting in that that, for those who have been persecuted, Jesus so identifies, there's such solidarity that Jesus is being persecuted along with suffering believers, and so the question that Paul responds with is not the question that I expect. Sometimes I try to read the Bible and I cover up the next words and I try to fill in the blank. You know what would I expect it to be? So, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Well, the obvious answer is you know who are you, Lord.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Who am I persecuting?
Speaker 2:I don't know what you're talking about, right?
Speaker 1:But I might picture it like I didn't persecute you, this disorienting defensiveness I didn't persecute you Right who's? Talking to me. Who are you, lord? And really I think that's the most important question and I love that you said that's not what Jesus leads with.
Speaker 2:Is it God? This is Jesus. Listen to me, yes, I love that.
Speaker 1:he leads with a question yeah, you know why are you persecuting me. That's so interesting. And so he says who are you and what is Jesus saying in response?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting and I'm with you, shannon. I think that the word tells us that his people, christians, the church we are the body of Christ and church capital C, universal church. Right, we are the body of Christ and Jesus is our head, but when one part of the body is hurt, all parts of the body suffer with it, and so Jesus really does in this passage. And this is not the point of the passage, right, but this is a beautiful moment for us to just acknowledge. Jesus feels the pain of his hurting children. Jesus feels the persecution, the suffering, the struggle, and so, yeah, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. There is no difference between persecuting the followers of Christ and persecuting Jesus himself.
Speaker 1:Right. I can imagine that some of the families from Jerusalem whom Paul had participated in the death of their family member Right One day, reading these words, I can imagine they're being comforted Like Jesus sees, absolutely Jesus knows. Jesus feels persecuted right along with us, he's suffering with us and he's going after this guy.
Speaker 2:So that's what I picture. Like why are you?
Speaker 1:persecuting me and I'm going to nail you to the wall and you know, put a stop to this. I'm going to keep you know, maybe keep you blind and mute and whatever else, but the next part is very surprising, like this is one of those places where I would cover up these words, and this is not what I would expect. Jesus says I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Speaker 2:But rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do.
Speaker 1:So I just think that's weird, because if I'm Jesus, let me tell you that's such a. I don't I shouldn't even say that, but but I would picture like OK, now I'm really going to give it to him, or now I'm going to tell him you are wrong, you know I'm going to correct him. But go to the city and then you'll be told like what do you make? Of this.
Speaker 2:You know, I've thought about this in various ways and obviously only Jesus and Paul himself probably know really, ultimately what this is about.
Speaker 2:Right? But from the scripture and from Paul's life, I do feel like this was maybe a first opportunity for him to learn obedience, the Lord that he had been refusing to follow, the true Lord, jesus. And so Jesus is not going to give him the full blueprint for what his life is going to look like. He's going to say you obey me. The next step and this is how you learn obedience right, it's how little children learn is just to do one thing at a time, to learn how to walk in whatever they're being asked to do. I mean, I think of my own relationship with Jesus, like sometimes I wish he'd give me the 10 year blueprint, but he just says just take the next step. This is what obedience look like. And for someone like Paul, who had had so much freedom and ability and power true earthly power to change other people's lives for the worse, here we have a master who is saying to him you do this thing, you go into the city and basically you'll be told what to do.
Speaker 2:You don't get to choose anymore. Your life is no longer your own.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love the way you put that. So it's a choice Like here. You are at a crossroads. You have just had this revelation you have just heard from Jesus, which refutes everything leading up to this moment in Paul's life. Right, remember, we said those two things that Jesus was not the Messiah and that Jesus was not risen from the dead. Well, he has just met him and so he apparently is risen from the dead. And if that is false, well then maybe, maybe Jesus actually is who he said he was Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And we have to have, I think, some compassion for Paul, you know as I studied his life.
Speaker 2:In writing the book that I just did, the Path to Peace, I really gained some compassion for him because we read the story with the whole. We have the whole story. You know, we have the cross and the resurrection and the church in Acts and all of the epistles that we know Paul later wrote. So in our minds we're thinking, OK, well, Paul got it and he moved on and lived.
Speaker 2:This was a total upending of everything he had built his life on, and we have to, with compassion, I think, the same compassion that Christ had for him say, literally, the bedrock of Paul's life was pulled out from underneath his feet. His comprehension of who he was, who God was and what it meant to be a faithful follower of God changed instantaneously, and so he was completely rocked, emotionally, spiritually, practically I mean his whole career as a Pharisee, like if he believes this about Jesus. He encounters the risen Christ. He can no longer be a Pharisee. So everything he's built his life on is gone in this one encounter with Jesus. And yet, as we see in the scriptures, later down the road Paul will say that all those things that he had built his life on were rubbish compared to the knowledge of knowing and walking with Jesus, and so it was a trade that he willingly ended up making and would have traded everything else for, but in this very moment the cost would have been so exorbitantly high for him.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would correct one little thing that you said. He did continue to call himself a Pharisee. So he didn't let go of that maybe status, if you will, but he did. I mean he obviously had a conversion experience. He was headed one way, he was headed into the city to totally drag Christians away and he's going to become one of them.
Speaker 1:So, and what I love about what you just said is this is a crossroads like here's your first opportunity. Are you going to obey? Yeah, are you going to even continue to head towards the city? And that's the first thing we see him do. He rises from the ground, it says, and although his eyes were open, he saw nothing. So he's blind, so there's a hurdle for getting to the city. I might want to drop the state like bring me to the closest doctor and have him open my eyes, but he's blind, he sees nothing. And then it says in verse eight so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. I mean, that's pretty, that's a humble entrance, wouldn't you say Absolutely, absolutely. Is Paul the leader? I mean he's leading this entourage and he's got his papers and he's going with his demands. I mean he's large and in charge and now he is blind, being led, and he has just been utterly stopped in his tracks, right, Totally.
Speaker 1:And yeah, so there's a lot of humility in even taking this first step of obedience. Jesus says go to the city and you'll be told what to do. And so now we see him going to the city. That's interesting. Anything else before we move on there, anne, that you think is astonishing or interesting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would just say the blindness which obviously we'll see. I mean, there's spiritual connections there too. But I do have to wonder if something that seems so awful to Paul in the moment of suddenly being physically blind, if it actually was one of God's mercies to just kind of lovingly force him to obey because he didn't have a choice now.
Speaker 2:I mean he literally could do nothing without help from someone else, and so it's a mercy, right? This physical blindness is also pointing to his spiritual blindness, but it's also a mercy to get him where he needs to go, and it reminds me of things and seasons in my life where we walk through suffering or trials, or I had to face deep pain that I would never have chosen and didn't want. And yet, in God's mercy, he uses those things to shape us and get us where he calls us to go, and so it's just a reminder to me that sometimes the things that seem so scary and awful to begin with, in when filtered through God's hands, can end up being a true kindness to us in the end, that's so good, he just slows us up.
Speaker 1:We're on our path, we've got our papers. We're marching, we've got our purpose.
Speaker 2:And he's like slow up.
Speaker 1:We're gonna just temporarily blind you here for a minute. You need to be led for a bit, and it is his kindness. And so we see Paul. He's being led by the hand. He arrives in Damascus and for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank. Now I noticed in your book by the way, I love this chapter in the path to peace You're talking about this how Paul is going through this identity crisis and these three days are gonna prove to be very pivotal and important in his life. And so you mentioned, you think, that there's repentance going on here, is that? What else do you see about these three?
Speaker 2:days. Well, I mean, I think there's some interesting biblical correlations we can make right to three days of Jesus dying and rising again those three days. But that it is. It's a time of transformation for Paul because when, as we go through the story, when Paul's blindness finally leaves and he can see again, all he wants to do is be baptized and follow Jesus. I mean it's like he goes into a cocoon almost and comes out a butterfly you know, Spiritually.
Speaker 2:I mean, there is this real transformation of who he is and I think we don't know again what happened in those three days is ultimately between him and the Lord. But you have to imagine, I think in my own life, anytime I've had these powerful moments in my life you have to reevaluate, you have to reevaluate your life and say I think Paul had to say wait a minute. If Jesus is alive, like you said, what does that mean? What now must I do? How must I live? Where do I need to repent? What has to change?
Speaker 2:And Paul comes out of this encounter with Jesus a radically changed man which is par for the course, for his personality. He is all in. You know, if he's gonna be a persecuting Pharisee of the way, it is 110%. If he is gonna be a follower of Jesus and preach the gospel, it is 110%. And so I do think that these three days in fasting and ostensibly in prayer, being by himself, when he actually, probably for the first time, prayed to the Lord Christ, interacted with the word in light all those scriptures he had memorized you know in his training interacted with those in light of Jesus as the Messiah.
Speaker 2:I mean, his whole brain must have exploded with the truth, and so that, combined really with just the revelation of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave to him through coming to an understanding of Jesus as the Messiah, he was a changed man, he was a new man, kind of moving out of those three days.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is so good. So what does this story do for us? When we're looking at the false narratives that the world perpetuates all around us, how does this story correct our understanding? But what is some lie that we might passively believe that this story helps bring clarity to our belief system?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think we could go a lot of directions, but I think, overarching for me, it reminds me that our culture you know the culture that Saul was in told him one thing about Jesus, told him that this was how you can please God and, honestly, how you can please the people around you. And Paul lived that way for a really long time and then he encountered the truth of Jesus. He encountered the word made flesh. He repented and believed, and the life that he lived was radically opposed to who he had been before. It was a total 180.
Speaker 2:And it just convicts me afresh, shannon, that, like I cannot look to my culture to tell me what will quote please God, and ultimately, what will please the people around me. Our culture says please yourself, make yourself happy. If your marriage doesn't make you happy, get out. If your children are making you unhappy, walk away. If your job isn't making you happy, leave. And I'm not saying sometimes God will call us out of hard circumstances, absolutely. But our culture says do everything ultimately for your own gain and your own happiness.
Speaker 2:And this story reminds us that that's not the call we have as Christians. There is much we will have to suffer for the name of Christ. And yet, as Paul's life shows us, it will be so worth it, more than worth it. It will fill our lives here with joy and it will give us an eternal joy that will outstrip anything we could have gained here. And so, yeah, you can walk that down to. How am I handling my relationships with other people? Am I loving my friends so that I get what I want out of the relationship, or am I actually sacrificially seeking to serve and care for them as part of the body of Christ? You know my spouse, my kids, everything it plays out in. But the ultimate thing is, am I walking in the light of Jesus or am I walking in the darkness of what I want to do, because culture says it's fine and it makes me feel good?
Speaker 2:And they're radically opposed. The way of Christ is radically opposed to our culture.
Speaker 1:Exactly, paul was on an upward trajectory. He was, I mean, gaining status. He had a bright future ahead. But then this bright light brought him to his knees and what changed everything is who is Jesus Right? And that's what changes everything for us too. I mean, we aren't necessarily going to suffer immediately when we follow Jesus. But, like I love in the beginning of your book, the Path to Peace, you know, you have this moment where you're looking into the fireplace and you're saying this is not what I signed up for. You had heartache and disappointments and I think there was a job loss in there, and you just kind of found yourself getting angry. Tell us, you know. Tell us that moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, my husband had actually lost his job as a pastor for telling the truth, which seems odd, but yeah, I mean, there's a whole story with that too. But and we, just we lost our community overnight. We lost our financial stability overnight, we lost our friends because our church was our community and our job. You know, I do. Our son at that point was a baby and he was having a lot of health issues. I just remember saying God, I was so angry I said this is not what I signed up for, lord, this is not what I thought I wanted or what I thought I was going to get out of life with you and my precious husband God bless him. I mean, I and I was mad, I was yelling, I was crying, it just all of these frustrations and fears really had come to a head in my life. And it kind of all came out that one night and Michael, he, just he turned to me and said Anne, what, what did you think you signed up for with Jesus? And in my flesh I was like God, I don't want to talk about it, but you know, but the truth is right. Like what we signed up for with Christ is to go and die to ourself, to what we thought we deserved, and it's to gain the preciousness of our Lord Jesus, and it so often never looks like what we expected.
Speaker 2:The lives we, you know, that upward trajectory of life here on earth that our world says we should go after, is so often not the way of Jesus in our individual lives. That's not to say that God will call some people to have great powers of earthly, great positions of earthly power, but for many of us our lives are smaller and humbler and maybe less flashy than we thought that they would be. And yet if we are with Jesus, we are gaining the greater treasure. But it's, I mean, it's something I've had to wrestle with the Lord, with. So much is like I thought my life was going to look this way, god, and I'm frustrated and upset that it doesn't. And so, essentially, the path to peace.
Speaker 2:This book is kind of him walking me through biblical study and truth of like. What does it mean to walk in Christ's peace when our lives are turned upside down, when, like Paul or like Ruth in the Bible, or like Sarah in the Bible, or like Mary, the mother of Jesus, when God abends, our lives and our stories and our trajectories are very different than we hoped and dreamed and prayed that they would be. Is it possible to still walk in the peace of Christ, to still have His joy, to still have an undergirding sense of rest in the Lord? And the answer is yes, 100%, and it comes from knowing our Lord and King, from knowing His word and from being around others in the church who can point us to that truth when we don't have the strength to do it ourselves.
Speaker 1:So good. Maybe living like it's true, then, is living like it's taking that next step of obedience, like we saw Paul do, absolutely, come what may you know whether there's cost involved, whether there's a humbling, a turning, whether it's a downward trajectory, like you and your husband experience? Living like it's true is you know what Jesus is worth it, amen. And what path do I have other than the one that he calls me to, that's the life of a Christian, to do so good? In closing, let me pose that question that Anne's husband asked her what did you think you signed up for with Jesus?
Speaker 1:And I think, if we're honest, most of us would admit yeah, we're hoping for an upward trajectory for our lives, and maybe it's because you know we want to serve God. We wanted to serve Him with a large family or a marriage that lasted for decades, or we wanted to serve Him with our financial success or our success in the workplace, and yet things aren't going the way that we hoped. And so here's the question that we have to ask ourselves. As Jesus stands in the middle of the road and blocks our plans, we have to ask well, who is he? And if he is Messiah, if he is our Lord, then what choice do we have other than to obey? Come back next time. Anne and I are going to continue in this same passage in Acts, chapter nine, and it is another fabulous conversation. You won't want to miss it, thank you.