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Well, we're talking about do-overs. That's our series. Obviously, we're talking about do-overs. It's on the slide behind me. And today we're going to talk about the God of the Bible and how he is portrayed as not just a God who forgives little sins. You know, a God who just, you know, is this God who's gracious with little things that we do wrong. But actually, if you read through the Bible, what you'll see is that he graciously forgives and pursues people who are even fighting against him, who are headed in the exact opposite direction to God. That's what I love about the story we're going to look at today. And as I think about that, and I think about this series that we're doing, I'm reminded, and I love the fact that God is a God of do-overs. That's your first fill-in-the-blank this morning if you are taking notes. God is a God of do-overs. I love that the God that we worship here as Christians gathered today is this God of do-overs, and that makes him different from other gods. The fact that he gives us grace and doesn't just give us grace, he actually pursues us with grace is unique. You could search and search and not find another faith that's based around a God like that. And that's what makes the gospel message so unique. So this month we've been talking about do-overs, and essentially it's a series on grace stories, right? And as we've gone through that, we've talked about several different characters from the scriptures and how we've seen God's grace revealed in their lives. The first week we talked about this lady who was caught in adultery. And uh, you know, it was one of those circumstances where it wasn't like a gray area. She was sinning, right? She was caught in sin. And so we see Jesus interact with her and give her this grace, right? And in that moment, we see this do-over story as she, as a sinner, is given grace. The next week we went into talking about a different type of guy. He was a guy named Zacchaeus, a tax collector, which means he was working for the Romans. He was a Jew working for the Romans, which meant he was a thief. So we talked about a sinner the first week, a thief the second week, and we saw how Jesus, you know, interacted with Zacchaeus and bought repentance and healing in his life. And then we went on and talked about a very different character last week, one of Jesus' close friends. He was in Jesus' top three. Any of you guys remember my space when you used to have a top eight friends? Okay. Peter was one of Jesus' top three friends, right? And yet Peter turns out to be a traitor. He denies Jesus in his greatest moment of need. And Jesus even predicted that, right? He's there and he's like, I'd never, you know, I'll die with you, Jesus. And he says, matter of fact, before the rooster coat crows, before morning, you're going to deny me three times. And he does it, right? And the cool thing about the story last week, I really loved the story last week, is you find Peter back out fishing, doing what he knows how to do, right? And Jesus doesn't just leave Peter out there fishing, he comes and finds him. He comes to the bank of the sea where they're fishing and calls Peter back to a relationship and restores him. Great do-over story. I don't know about you, but as we've talked about these stories of grace, I've been reminded of my own grace stories. And I hope that that's true for you guys. As we've been talking about this grace that's been received by these characters, that'd be true of your lives as well. But one of the other things I've been reminded of is other grace stories from culture and all of that sort of stuff. And one that keeps coming back up into my mind is the story of the miserables. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Les miserabals. I can't really uh les oh I can't say it, I'm not French. But you guys know the story I'm talking about, right? It's a novel, it's a musical, and now it's a musical movie, but it's a great story of grace. It sounds a little depressing because it's the story of the miserables, but it's a great story of grace. Because when you look at the story, what you see is grace. The main character, Jean Valjean, he's this guy, right, who's incarcerated, put in prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to try and feed his family. And as he's been in prison, he's tried to escape several times. That's why it's a 19-year sentence. The story picks up right as he's been released from prison. And he goes from town to town trying to make a living and to get it back on his feet, but nobody will take him in because he's he's a convict, right? He's a marked man, and everywhere he goes, he gets rejected, and he's he's just beside himself. He's like, you know, hungry and nowhere to live. And finally, this bishop comes into his life and offers him some grace, gives him a place to uh to stay and and some food to eat. But Jean Valjean decides to repay him by by uh taking off in the middle of the night with his silverware. And he's taking you know these valuable items to the bishops, and he just gets down the road and the police catch him. He's caught again, and he's brought back to the bishop's house. And when he gets back to the bishop's house, the police say, Hey, we found this man and he was stealing from you, and we caught him, and here he is. And the bishop says, No, no, no, no, you got it all wrong. I gave him the silverware. The only thing is he forgot to take these candles as well that are even more valuable, and he gives them to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean is flawed, he doesn't know what's happening. This man is offering him extravagant grace in this moment, right? And as that happens, the the bishop whispers in his ear and says, Hey, God has is allowing this to happen for a reason. Become an honest man with what these candles that I'm giving you. And the rest of the story is a story of how he takes that grace that he's received personally and becomes an agent of grace to the people that he's placed around. As somebody who's received grace, he goes on to give the grace to the people he interacts with for the rest of his life. And as you look at the character that we're going to look at today in the scriptures, that's much the same. He's a man who's given grace and then uses that grace in the lives of the people that he gets placed around. But this story is different from the other do-overs that we've looked at because unlike being a sinner or a traitor or a thief, the guy that we're looking at today is a religious man. He's a moral man, he's a good man. The scriptures actually tell us that he's incredibly zealous for God, that he's passionate about his relationship and his religion with this God. He's so passionate that he gets upset that there's these people saying that Jesus is the Messiah. And so he goes out and starts to destroy these people, take down these people who are saying that this God guy Jesus is the Messiah. And he goes from home to home, from city to city doing that. But God, as you're gonna see in this story, intervenes in his life, and in that moment he goes from being the guy pursuing to being the guy who's trying to help the church flourish. This means, of course, that I'm talking about Paul today and the story of Paul's do-over. Paul's life shows us that God's grace is to the religious, and that's even to those who don't realize that they need it. Let me give you a little bit of background on Paul. Paul was a Jewish man with Gentile association, and what that simply means is that he was a unique character in that he could play on either side of the field, right? He was pretty uh fortunate in that regard. So to a Jew, he was super Jewish. Like he was like the man. He could like recite off all the Torah and be the Jewish guy. But if he was in association with Gentiles, he could be the Gentile guy too. He he he was a Roman citizen, which means he had privilege amongst the Romans. So so he's this very interesting character in that he can play on either side of the field really well. The other thing, a couple of other things we know about him, he had roots in a in a city, an important city known as Tarsus. So when you hear his name, he's often referred to as of Tarsus, that's where he's from. Tarsus is a place in modern day Turkey, okay? So if you need a reference, that's kind of where he's known as being from. But we know that he spent a lot of his childhood and and as a young man in Jerusalem learning all his Jewish traditions and customs because he was brought up to be a Pharisee. That meant he was a part of a Jewish religious and political party that was uh called the Pharisees. And his teacher in particular is somebody who's actually referenced in scriptures a couple of times, a guy named Gamaliel, somebody who was really respected, and you can go back and see he's a historical fit figure. That was the guy who was Paul's teacher, his rabbi, okay? So we know these things about Paul. We know also that he was there and present. The first time that we hear about him in scripture is in Acts chapter 7. Acts chapter 7 is where Stephen is being murdered for proclaiming the name of Jesus. These Jews get upset with Stephen and they take him outside of the city and they throw rocks at him to kill him. And what we see there, we're introduced to Paul in this moment as standing there giving approval to the murder of this man who's proclaiming the name of Jesus. Not a great entry into the story, right? And so that's how we see Saul, first reference. Now I call him Saul because he had two names. Before his conversion, he was known as Saul. After his conversion, he was known as Paul. That's not uncommon. So we saw that even in the life of Peter. Peter was also named as Simon. Simon is Peter, Peter is Simon, and in the same way, Saul is Paul, Paul is Saul. Good thing they rhyme, right? That kind of helps us out a little bit. But what we see is the conversion of this man, and this is where we're going to focus our time today, in Acts chapter 9. So I'm going to invite you to grab a Bible and pull it out, and we're going to read Acts chapter 9, just a couple of verses out of there to get us going in this conversation this morning. Acts chapter 9. We'd encourage you to read along if you have a Bible or a Bible app on your phone. Acts chapter 9, verse 1. Okay, what you'll see there in verse 1 is that it says, meanwhile. Now the meanwhile is there because it's the story as it's been going along. Dr. Luke is the guy who wrote the book of Acts, and when he wrote Acts, he uh he was going along and he was talking about Peter here for a while, and now he's switching back to talking about Saul, Paul, okay? So that's why it says meanwhile, and it goes on and says in verse 1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus. So that if if he found any men or women who belonged to the way, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he travelled and was nearing Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him. Falling to the ground, he heard a voice from voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I know you're excited to read on, but we're gonna hold it there, okay? Put you on the edge of your seats. Let's let's talk about what's going on here. There's a bit of context that we need to be aware of. First thing is that Saul goes and gets authority to go and persecute. Now I find this interesting. It kind of reveals a little bit about his character, right? Because if you think about it, he's wanting to like take down these people who are talking about Jesus, but he doesn't just go to Damascus and get some like firebombs and like throw them into their houses or whatever. He goes and gets authority. He goes by the book. And that's because he is a follower of the law. He's the guy who goes and do does things the way that they're meant to be done. And so he goes and gets authority to go and get these guys from Damascus and bring them back. Now the second thing that's interesting is it says that there that he goes and gets people of the way. Did you guys notice that? It was capitalized. The way was what Christians were known as before the word Christian was invented, okay? So don't get confused by that. That's not some sort of weird sect or cult within the Christian faith or anything like that. It wasn't the first denomination or anything like that. It was just what Christians were called before they were called Christians, members of the way, people who believed in Jesus and believed in Jesus for salvation. The third thing that's interesting about this is that Damascus was about six days' journey by foot. It was 175 miles, so further than Houston from here. That's how far that he had to go to get these people. So this is a like a this is a pretty legitimate journey that he's going on. And when you think about it, like what we see is that he's almost arrived to his destination. So he's got to be like five or six days into his journey to Damascus. And there he is, going down the road, and then all of a sudden the text tells us that this light flashes around them. Now, if you go over to Acts 26, where there's another account of this same story that Paul's giving us, what we see is that he actually says that it was this light that shone around was brighter than the sun. And I think that's significant because if you think about it, these guys aren't walking through some like dark jungle or forest or something like that. They're in the Middle East. It's bright. They're walking down the road, and this light is brighter than the sun, and it's so bright that that Paul, Saul, hits the deck and he is blinded, like physically blinded. He cannot see. After the experience, if you read on, you'll see that he's physically blinded. He cannot see anything. And for the next three days as he pray prays and fasts, he is blinded for those next three days. And it's not until God sends this man to come and pray over him that he's miraculously healed and he can physically see again. That's how bright this light is in this encounter, how intense it was. I don't know if you guys have ever experienced utter darkness. I've had a couple of experiences where I've been in a really dark place. I uh as a young man, when I was fortunate enough to live in New Zealand for a few years, and uh the church group I was with went out to this place a couple of times called Cave Stream, and it was this cave that was a stream. That's really intelligent, isn't it? Uh it was this stream you would walk up that went through a cave, and I remember when we get into the middle of this cave, they'd turn off all the lights off. Have you guys ever done anything like that? They turned all the lights off, and I mean blackness like you've never seen, this darkness where like you could, I mean you can feel it, but you can't see anything in that moment. And that's always stayed with me, and and I imagine that's what it's like to be blind. And so Paul's here and he's blinded, and as I think about that, I think that the two things that that happen when you would be blinded like that. The first thing is it'd be incredibly terrifying, it'd be scary. But the second thing is I believe it'd be very clarifying also, because and when you're in that sort of that sort of darkness, all distractions are taken away, and that's exactly what we see happens in this story. What I'd like you to note down in your notes there is that Paul was physically blinded so that he could see spiritually, it's kind of like this inverse thing going on, and this isn't a new thing that God does. If you read through the scriptures, you'll see many stories where God has to disable people to enable them to be the people that he's called them to be. Think about Moses with me. I'll give you a couple of examples. Think about Moses. Moses is there as the prince of Egypt. He goes over to look at his people, the people of Israel, who he's from, and he's like, Well, maybe I could lead these people, maybe I could help them out, and he murders this Egyptian god, right? And then he like flees from Egypt as a murderer. He takes off all his royalty is stripped away, he becomes a shepherd, and he lives for 40 years in Midian as a shepherd. And it's at that point that God comes to him and says, Hey, I'm gonna use you. He was completely disabled, stripped, stripped of everything, and at that moment God says, Hey, I'm I'm gonna enable you to lead my people. Another example, think about Jonah. We talked about him a couple of months ago. Jonah's there in the middle of this giant fish under the ocean. You don't get much more disabled than that, right? Like you definitely don't have cell phone coverage in the middle of a giant fish in the in the ocean. So here he is in this fish, he's completely disabled, and it's at that moment, that's the turning point in the story, that he cries out to God and says, God, I love you, I worship you, and I'm surrendered to you. That's the turning moment in his life. He's disabled, so he's enabled to be who he is. This is true in our own lives too, in a much smaller scale. I haven't been in the middle of a fish, but you know, I have different things that happen in my life sometimes that disable me, but enable me to connect in the way that God wants me to. I I experienced this actually recently, uh last month. I thought I had a stomach bug uh, and a couple of days later I find myself on the operating table in the middle of the night having my appendix removed. Okay? So I had an avendectomy, really fun. Uh, not really. Uh, and then uh, you know, after that, you you're pretty much laid up. And so Christmas and and on into the new year, I had instructions from the doctors on things I was allowed to do and not allowed to do. But what happened is I was disabled by what was going on physically. I was enabled to really connect with my family and with God. I had one of the best Christmases I've ever had with my family and really in my relationship with God, and I think that was because I was disabled, so I was enabled to really connect with God. God uses these situations in our lives, and we see that totally here in Paul's life. Well, let's see what happens next in the story. I know you guys are all on the edge of your seats. Uh, Acts 26. We're gonna jump over there because there's another account of this exact same story. This is a different version. This version is just Paul retelling the story to a king, a king named King Agrippa. So I want for us to read this version because he he elaborates a little bit more on what happens in this moment as this light's shining on him. But very similar, you can read both stories in parallel, and it's basically the same thing. So we found we left the story, there was this um voice saying, Saul, Saul, why why are you persecuting me? And in verse 15 of Acts 26 is where we're gonna pick up. Then I said, Who are you, Lord? And the Lord replied, I am Jesus, the one you were persecuting. But get up, stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and a witness of what you have seen and what I will reveal to you. I will rescue you from the people and from the Gentiles. I now send you to them to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that by faith in me they may receive forgiveness of sins and share among those who are sanctified. We see several things happen here in the text, but the first thing that we see is that Jesus identifies himself. Now, this is a big deal. I don't know if you guys understand this. Paul has been fighting against and persecuting people who are proclaiming the name of Jesus. He believes that this Jesus guy is false, that he is not true, that all this stuff that's been said about him is a fallacy. It's not real. And then all of a sudden, this voice from heaven says, I am Jesus. Boom. His world's blown up in that moment. One of the uh one of the commentaries I was reading on this put it this way in Saul's view, one of the worst aspects of Christian blasphemy had been their claim that Jesus of Nazareth was alive. Now he must face this reality. In this moment, he's f forced to face the reality that Jesus is real and that he's been fighting in the wrong direction. See, Paul was convinced that what he was doing was the will of God. Do you guys understand that? When he was going and persecuting these Christians, he thought he was doing that in the name of God, that he was helping Yahweh, the God that he believed in. And yet, here in a moment he's told that all that he's believed is true. It's actually interesting to note, if you go back to Acts chapter 5, before Saul and Paul are even on the scene, you see these Jewish men all coming together to discuss what do we do with these people who are proclaiming the name of Jesus? How should we treat them? How should we react to them? And the guy who gets up and says something is actually this guy, Gamaliel, who is Paul's teacher. So this is kind of interesting. This guy gets up and says something to the men of Israel, and what he says is actually kind of prophetic in when we think about it in light of Paul and who he was. Listen to what's said by Gamaliel in Acts chapter 5. In verse 35, he says, Men of Israel, be careful about what you're going to do to these men. He's talking about the Christians. He goes on in verse 38. Stay away from these men and leave them alone, for if this plan is a work of men, it will be overthrown. But if it is a work of God, you will not be able to overthrow it. And listen to this, you may even be found fighting against God. Isn't that interesting? Here's the guy who instructed Paul and helped bring him up in the faith, in this Jewish faith. He's prophesying exactly what Paul was going to do. He's saying, Hey, you may find yourself fighting against God, and that's exactly what Paul in a moment realizes that he's been doing. Because what Paul thought he was doing was fulfilling the law. He was being passionate and zealous about his faith in God. He was appeasing God with how moral and good he was. He was like, Hey, God, look at me. I'm doing all this awesome stuff. I'm loving you, I'm keeping the law, and I'm even like getting rid of these people who are saying false things about this Jesus character. Sometimes we're blinded by our own goodness so that we cannot fathom God's grace. I'll say that again. Sometimes we're blinded by our own goodness so that we cannot see or fathom God's grace. There's a quote written by a theologian that I always find really harsh but really true and good. And I want to read it for you this morning. It puts it like this, and I think this is Paul of my same sorry. I think this is true of my life, and I think it's true of Paul's life as well, sometimes. The main thing between you and God is not. So much your sins, it's your damnable good works. It's the things that we do to try and impress God, which by the way is a sin. But it's like, hey God, look at me. Look at all I've done for you. You should be impressed by all of this stuff. So I want to ask you this morning: do you think that you're a good person? Because Paul at this point in his life thought he was a good person. But being good, you've got to understand this, being good is a futile pursuit, and Paul should have known better. Paul had memorized the Old Testament as this like Jewish Jew, he'd memorized the Old Testament. Isaiah 64. That puts it so bluntly. It tells us that our righteous acts are like filthy rags. Paul knew that text, and he should have known that all that he was doing to try to impress God was just like filthy rags. That text always gets me. Our righteous acts, the best things that you do on the best day. So even when you're like telling somebody about Jesus or helping an old lady out who lives across the street, or whatever you're doing, the very best things you do are like filthy rags. That's pretty confronting, right? All this reminds us that we need God's grace. Even when we try our best to be good, we can find ourselves in opposition to God. That's a scary thought. The second thing that we see in the text, the first is Jesus reveals his identity, but the second thing is that Jesus gives a new mission. It's crazy to think how quickly Paul's world came crumbling down. And it's true in our lives too, right? It doesn't take a lot for our world to crumble away. It can be a phone call or a text message. It can be one conversation, it can be a doctor's visit, a wrong turn. Life changes, right? In an instant. And for Paul, it's this instant. The light shines around him. He says, Who are you, Lord? And he says, I am Jesus. Boom. His world is blown up in this moment by what's happening. In an instant, he has a new view of Jesus. In an instant, he has a new view of the scriptures and how Jesus fulfills those. In an instant, he has a new identity. In an instant, he has a new perspective on all of life. And in an instant, I love this. He had a new mission. If you read on in the text, you'll see the mission that God calls him to. God's grace brings healing and new direction. It brings both of those things. And I love that. So he says, hey, I'm Jesus. There's this starting of restoration in relationship. But then he goes on in verse 16 to give Paul a new mission. I don't think that you and I, if we were in God's position, we'd do the same thing that Jesus does to Paul, right? We'd come along and be like, hey, Paul, stop persecuting. I'm Jesus. And then we'd walk away. We'll be like, hey, I'm done with that. But rather than that, Jesus comes to him and says, Hey, I'm Jesus, and then read with me again what he says. Verse 16, but get up and stand on your feet, for I've appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and as a witness to what you have seen and what I will reveal to you. I will rescue from the people and from the Gentiles. I now send you to them to open their eyes. Here's that blindness thing again, so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, and that by faith in me they may receive forgiveness of sins and share among those who are sanctified. What a great calling. I don't know about you guys, but as I read that, I'm like, that is a cool do-over story. I mean, we're talking about a guy who's like running this direction, persecuting the church, and then all of a sudden God's like, hey, stop. You need to see reality here for a second, and we're gonna go this way. Like it's a complete turnaround in this moment. And I love this do-over story because it reminds us of God's amazing grace. So, what do we do with this? What do we do with Paul's story? What does it mean, all of this conversation, for you, you and I here this morning in this room? We can talk about Paul and the context of the story and all this stuff. But I want for this to be practical. I want for this to apply, and and as I've thought about that, as I've processed that, there's three challenges I'd like to give us this morning. The first is this I'd like to challenge us that we need to see ourselves in Paul's life. It's easy for me to get up here and preach a sermon or for you guys to listen and be like, oh yeah, Paul, he should have realized he was headed the wrong direction and God intercepted. How good, you know. The end. You know, we're done with that. But let's see ourselves in Paul's life. He was blinded by his piety. You and I struggle with blind piety. Our own righteousness, our own goodness blinds us from time to time. And that's true of you, whether you're like a Christian, like somebody who grew up in the church, like I did. It really, I mean, we really struggle with blind piety if you grew up in the church like I did. But even if you're somebody through to somebody who's like an atheist, you can start struggle with your own piety, your own goodness. I'll give you an example. I've got a couple of friends that I've talked to that don't believe in God about faith and stuff, and if you kind of scratch back in the conversation and get further into the conversation and say, okay, let's just pretend that for a second, for the sake of the conversation, that you uh find out that God is real and you have to stand before him. What would you like to happen in that moment? I've had this conversation with some friends, and they'll typically say, Well, I'd hope that he'd see that I'm a what? Good person, right? I'm a good person. We all struggle with blind piety, we all struggle with being like Paul. It actually reminds me back to the story of the miserables, because there's a character that really struggles with blind piety. If you remember to the story with me, if you've seen it and if you haven't, I'll try and describe it. There's the character of Javert. That's the guard. That's the guy who stood guard over Jean Valjean, the main character, when he was incarcerated. And years later their paths cross. Jean Valjean has gone on and he's assumed a new identity, hidden the fact that he's a convict, but he's used the grace that he's been given to empower his own life and the lives of those around him. He's now actually the mayor of a town, and the police inspector comes along, and it's this Javert character. And through some circumstances, he recognizes Jean Valjean and realizes that this man needs to be brought to justice. He's blinded by his parrot his piety, and he's like, This man needs to be join brought to justice. And so he confronts Jean Valjean, there's this interaction, and they go their separate ways. Jean Valjean escapes. And then years later, down the down the line, they find each other again in Paris, in France, right? And in this second time that they kind of come together, well, actually, it's been multiple times that they they cross their paths. At this moment, Javert is still bent on pursuing and finding this Jean Valjean character. It seems to consume him. It's all that he can think about. And as he pursues him, they finally cross paths. But as they cross their paths, Javert gets captured by some revolutionaries. And guess who steps in and saves his life? He's about to be put to death. Jean Valjean steps in and saves Javert's life. And he's hit with this problem in this moment, this man that he's been blind to seeing as only as a criminal. He can't live in a world where this man is actually good. And he's in turmoil. He doesn't know what to do. The story is really sad at this point because he does away with himself. He commits suicide. The police inspector. But he's so blinded by his piety. He can't live in a world where Jean Valjean is actually a good guy. And much in the same way, Paul was blinded by his own piety. And I think we struggle with this too. We're blinded by our own goodness. We're blinded by our busyness, we're blinded by our relentless pursuit of happiness, whatever that is. We're blinded by our idolatry. And I want to encourage us this morning that if as we see ourselves in Paul's life, that we need to repent. We need to repent of our own goodness, our own works, and realize that all we stand on is the grace of God. All we stand on is his goodness alone. There's a great saying, it says that the ground at the foot of the cross is level. I love that. We're all the same in front of Jesus. There is nothing that we do that we bring to the cross and say, hey, I helped out. Here I am, I pitched in. It's all God, right? The second thing that I'd encourage us, challenge us to think about is this. We need to see that God pursues. As we look at the story of Paul, we have to see that God is a God who pursues. I love this. God is unique in this way. God is the only deity that you will find who doesn't just allow his created beings to exist, but actually pursues them for relationship and pursues them with love. The Christian faith is unique. Not all religions are equal. You have to understand this. The God of the Bible is unique, and that is this message of the Bible. He's relentless in his pursuit of us. As you read through the pages of this text, what you'll see is that this is a God of love, who pursues us relentlessly. That's unique. And that's the gospel message. And so I want to ask you guys this morning, if God is a God of who pursues, do you believe that? And if you do believe that, if you can get to the point that you believe that what I'm saying is true this morning, that God is a God who pursues, what are you going to do with that information? How does that impact your life? If God pursues you, how does that impact your life? That should radically change and shape your life, if that's true. And my third challenge is just a way of giving you a couple of ways of fleshing that out. The third challenge is this we need to see that God's grace should produce worship and surrender. If we went on to look and examine the rest of Paul's life, which would, by the way, we'd be here for a next couple of months talking about Paul if we did that. Because we have a lot of information about what happened next in Paul's life. Amazing things. He becomes a church planner, a missionary, a theologian, a father of the faith. What we see in his life are these two things over and over through the rest of the scriptures, we see in Paul's life worship and surrender. These are two natural byproducts of the grace that we receive from God. And we see them over and over in Paul's life. And so the question I want to ask you guys today is if you have received God's grace, if I was to look in your life, if I was to look in my own life, do I see worship and surrender? Are those two things that are hallmarks of my life? Because if I've received grace, those are my two natural responses. Those are the two things that should naturally flow out of my life. Worship and surrender. I was thinking about this, and I was thinking, you know, there's a lot of things that I would like to be remembered for. And I, you know, it's kind of a depressing thought, but what would people put on your gravestone? Like when you die, what would you like people to put on your gravestone? And as I was thinking about this, I was thinking, man, these are the sort of things that I'd like on my gravestone. More important than he was a pastor, a good pastor at the church, or he was a good father, or he was a good husband, which is sure I want to be those things. I would like to have written on my gravestone, he was a man who loved God and a man who lived in worship and surrender. And so I don't know about you guys this morning, but I'm challenged by that. I want to live a life that is one that is lived in worship and surrender to a God who pursues us. I don't know what you need to take away from our conversation this morning. I know that all of us are in different places and positions as we walk into this room. Some of you just need to realize that God is a God of grace who pursues you. And you need to stop running from him. You need to allow yourself to be disabled for a moment so he can enable you to have a relationship with him. And if that's what you're you're kind of wrestling with right now, is God real? Do I believe in him? Does he really love me? As you wrestle with that, why don't you talk to somebody this morning about that? Somebody who brought you along, a friend, or you can come and talk to one of us here in a moment. I'd encourage you to do that. If you're somebody who's received grace, let's challenge ourselves to really think about hey, if I'm receiving God's grace and receiving that daily, how am I living in worship and surrender? That's a great question for us to ask ourselves as we look at Paul's life because those are the hallmark of this man who experienced an amazing grace, just like you and I can experience an amazing grace. Let me pray first.