The Christians Hour

Cody Custer: Welcome to The Christian's Hour. I'm Cody Custer, your host, and it's a joy to welcome you to our program. The Christian's Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, and our heart is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to all tribes, all languages, and all nations by radio and media until all have heard.

And we do that right here, beginning in our own communities and extending around the world. In fact, we have teams serving across Asia, producing programs in multiple languages to bring the gospel into some of the most difficult regions on the earth. God continues to go before us, breaking through barriers and reaching people right where they are with his love.

Now let me ask you, have you ever experienced a dramatic change in your life? A moment or season that completely transformed the way that you think or act or respond to the world around you? Well, in today's message, Rick Atchley, lead pastor of The Hills Church in Fort Worth, Texas, looks at the radical transformation of the apostle Paul and the life-changing impact Jesus had on him.

From a man who once persecuted followers of Christ to one of the most influential voices for God's kingdom, Paul's story reminds us of the relentless pursuit of Jesus for those who are far from him. Today we'll see that Jesus shows up because he never gives up. He is for everyone. Here's Rick.

Rick Atchley: I want to begin by asking the question: Have you ever taken a trip that changed your life? Maybe you went out of town to see a friend get married, and at the wedding, you met the person that you one day married. That trip changed your life. Or maybe you served in the military and you were stationed in places that you had never been and would never have gone, and the memories of those places changed your life.

Maybe you had an unplanned trip in the back of an ambulance to an emergency room where you learned some things about your future and your life has been changed. Perhaps you did a study abroad in college and you saw things you never thought you would see, you saw things you could never unsee, and your perspective is different. Many of us had the experience of going on mission trips that changed our lives.

In my case, I was about 23 and I got to go with a former missionary to Latin America and visit three countries. And that trip changed my life. For one thing, I saw poverty like I had never seen it before and that I could never unsee. But for another, I saw beauty, especially in the body of Christ that I had never experienced.

See, the first 23 years of my life, almost all of my worship was in one language with one set of traditions, primarily and almost exclusively in one ethnic group. And on that trip, I saw the global body with all of her diversity, and the beauty impacted me and I'll be forever different. Sometimes a trip just changes your life.

And what makes a lot of those trips so significant is the appearance of the unexpected. And often the unexpected is someone else's appearance. So what we're doing is looking at the people that had an encounter with the risen Christ. And in almost every case, it's someone that loved Jesus, someone that admired Jesus, someone that missed Jesus.

Except one. The one we're going to look at today. His name was Paul. And Paul did not admire Jesus. Paul thought Jesus was a fraud. He wasn't expecting or wanting to meet Jesus. But then Jesus appeared, and it changed his opinion, and it changed his life. And you could argue that outside of Jesus, no one has changed the world more than Paul.

And Paul loved to give his testimony. And whenever he did, he always started with the day that Jesus showed up in his life, which is a great place for anyone to start a testimony. So some background: he's also known as Saul, and that seems to be the name he used most in his pre-Christ life. And he did not just think Christians were wrong. He thought Christians were dangerous.

He did not say we just need to tolerate this new faith. He said we need to eliminate this new faith. He was there when Stephen, the first martyr that we know of, was stoned to death, and he approved of it. His attitude was we need more of this. So he got permission to go to other cities to arrest Christians. Now how zealous are you when it's not enough just to arrest Christians where you live, but go to other places to arrest them?

So he's on his way to one of those places when Jesus showed up. Acts 9: "As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 'Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.'"

Now as I mentioned, Paul thought the movement should be eradicated. He was that dedicated. And he had a reputation. Towns that he had not been to yet had heard of him, like Damascus. But with his reputation came reservation. Even as he's going, he's wrestling inside. In fact, in one of his testimonies, he said Jesus asked me why I was kicking against the goads.

That's not a metaphor we use anymore, but in that day, it was a metaphor for: Why aren't you dealing with your internal dissonance? You are doing something on the outside that is causing you pain on the inside. Why aren't you dealing with it? What was causing him pain? Maybe it was his own inability to keep the law. Maybe it was the miracles of Jesus.

I don't know if Paul ever saw Jesus do a miracle, but he knew people who did. He knew that they put a man on a cross that had supernatural power and only used it to do good. That ought to cause you to wrestle. And then there was the way Christians acted. If this new religion was so bad, why did it produce people that were so good? He heard Stephen forgive the people that stoned him.

So Paul is wrestling with all this, but one thing keeps him going: Jesus was dead. And he's got no room in his paradigm for a cursed and dead Messiah. "I don't care what Jesus did," he thinks, "a dead Messiah is no good to anybody." And then Jesus appeared, and his old paradigm disappeared. And by the way, Jesus is still doing this.

In nations of the world today where it's illegal to be Christian, where people are taught to believe that Jesus is a fraud, they're having dreams and they're having visions, and Jesus is appearing. And he's still rattling the paradigms of people who have been told that he was dead. You know why? Because Jesus will show up because he never gives up.

Understand, nobody had Paul on their prayer list. Nobody was saying, "Now let's be sure and pray for Paul before we go to bed." But God doesn't write people off just because they've written him off. And this is important because some of us right now know people that are far from God, but they're close to us. And they're on our hearts.

And what we need to remember is that people get saved because Christ is trying to reach them more than they're trying to reach Christ. You see, we don't get his attention because we're so good. He gets our attention because he's so good. And it appears that no one can send themselves to a place where Jesus no longer appears.

I read a blog by a theologian I admire named Russell Moore, and he said the next Billy Graham might be drunk right now. The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with a Darwin fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might currently be a misogynistic, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist.

The next Charles Spurgeon might be managing an abortion clinic today. And the next Augustine of Hippo might be a sexually promiscuous cult member right now, just like, come to think of it, the first Augustine of Hippo was. But the spirit of God can turn all that around, and he seems to delight to do so. It is never too hard for anybody to redirect their life back to Jesus. He can do that for anybody.

And so he appears to those that are willing to take a trip that'll change their life. So Jesus said, "You go into town, and you'll be told what to do." And by the way, they had to lead him into town because the appearance of Jesus literally blinded Paul. So he goes into town, and then Jesus appears to a guy named Ananias and said, "I want you to go tell Paul what he needs to do."

And Ananias said, "Well now, wait a second, Jesus, I've heard a lot about this guy." You ever think like sometimes we got to tell Jesus about people? Like Jesus doesn't know? Jesus says, "You go do what I'm telling you to do so that he can do what I'm telling him to do." So Ananias goes, and here's what he says: "The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth."

"You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name." And now two things here that Jesus is saying that are really critical. One, that remission is Jesus' invitation to anyone. Now when I use that word remission today, we typically use it of attacking cells that are trying to kill the body.

But the Bible uses the word as attacking the sin that is trying to kill the soul. And so here's Saul, and he's got to be blinded in order to see himself accurately. And what he saw was that he was a rebel and he's living outside of the will of God. But what he heard was the offer of remission: "Get up and be baptized and wash your sins away."

And notice what Jesus is telling him to do. He's telling Paul to go public that you believe the thing you have so publicly disputed—that I am risen from the dead. I don't want you believing in the resurrection in your closet. I don't want you just believing in the resurrection in your mind. No, I want you to go publicly in the act of baptism and you declare with people watching, "I believe in the death and in the resurrection of Jesus."

I believe that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to me today. He put this so well in a letter he wrote called Colossians, chapter two: "When you were baptized, you were buried with Christ and you were raised up with him through your faith in God's power that was shown when he raised Christ from the dead."

"When you were spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were not free from the power of your sinful self, God made you alive with Christ. And he forgave all our sins." Now that word all is important. I looked it up in the Greek, and it means all. Okay, it doesn't mean some. It doesn't mean only for some people. When you unite with the death and resurrection of Jesus, you are forgiven of all your sins.

So I have a preacher friend in Tennessee, and every year he takes a group from his church to Honduras. He's done this several years, and his favorite restaurant to eat at in Honduras is Wendy's. Go figure. So he's been a number of years, and this past summer they go to Wendy's. And he goes up to pay, and the manager is behind the counter and he notices this red book.

Forgive my Spanish, but I think that book says Libro de Quejas. Book of Complaints. He said, "What is this book?" "Well, it's so people can complain about this restaurant, about the food, about the service, about anything." And she opened it up, and there were complaints people had written, some of them very ugly and cutting and hurtful.

And he says, "That book just stays there?" Says, "Till it's filled up." And then what do you do? Throw it away? "No, we have to keep it on a shelf and put out a new book." And that's how I think some of you think God works. He's making a list and checking it twice and he's going to find out if you've been naughty or nice. He's got a book of complaints about you.

And not only that, other people have written in that book. Other people know all the screw-ups in your life. And not only that, you've written in that book, because nobody knows better than you how often you have failed to be the person. So there's always around this book of complaints about me. Now here's the good news.

When you unite with the death and resurrection of Jesus, God doesn't tear off a couple of pages. God doesn't take an eraser and rub off a couple of lines. God throws the book away. There is no book. There is no book! In fact, the only book you need to be concerned about now is the Lamb's Book of Life, and your name is written in it.

This is what Jesus is offering to anyone. I never tell people you need to invite Jesus into your life. You know why? Jesus doesn't want to be invited into your life. Your life is a mess. Jesus wants to invite you into his life, okay? I'm not saying sprinkle a little Jesus on your life so you can live your best life now. No, the best life you can live is when you're united with Jesus and you're living his life.

When his righteousness has clothed you, when the power of the Spirit that raised him from the dead is flowing in you, that's your best life. You say, "Well, pastor, that just can't work for me. You don't know what I've done." Here's what I do know. I know the price he paid is bigger than the mess you made. That this life is available to anybody. He wants to erase your past, but he wants you to embrace a new future.

And so again, Paul, giving his testimony, says, "Here's the rest of what Jesus told me," Acts 26: "Now get to your feet, for I have appeared to you to appoint you as my servant and witness. Tell people that you've seen me. I'm sending you to the Gentiles to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. And then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God's people."

So if remission is Jesus' invitation to anyone, re-mission is Jesus' expectation of everyone. See, resurrection demands reorientation. Notice Jesus never promised Paul restored eyesight. He promised new vision. "I have appeared to appoint you as a witness. You go and tell people you have seen me."

Paul went on a trip to arrest people following Jesus; he got arrested by Jesus on the way. And he would never be in charge of the plans for his life again. And whenever he testified, he said, "Got to start right here. Let me tell you about the day when Jesus appeared. I saw him." And he spent the rest of his life willing to die for a name he had once been willing to kill for.

Why? Again, because Jesus expects surrender. That resurrection demands reorientation. With your new life becomes a new purpose for living. Let Paul explain it better than anyone could: "Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person." Now Paul isn't just giving you theology; he's giving you his lived experience. This is what happened to me.

"The old life is gone; a new life has begun. And all of this is a gift from God who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him." We receive remission, and we receive re-mission. Tell people that you have experienced the living Christ. Because when you have seen Jesus, you can't ever look at anyone the same again.

You see, like Paul, people without Jesus are blind. And they think they can improve their lives by outer appearance. This is the Kool-Aid we drink: that we can do something on the outside to fix the broken on the inside. What they need is an appearance from Jesus to help them see. You don't need to change your old life, you need to bury it.

Listen to Jesus. He was talking to a man named Nicodemus, and he said, "Flesh gives birth to flesh." In other words, all you can do in your human strength is come up with fleshly answers, just dealing with the external. But Jesus said, "The Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying 'you must be born again.'"

Jesus is saying to us, "You shouldn't be surprised." Haven't we lived enough life, haven't we looked around enough to know you cannot fix the inside with stuff on the outside? That you don't need modification, you need resurrection. You need to bury that old life that was driven by the flesh and get that new life that is empowered by the Holy Spirit.

That's what Paul understood when he got baptized. "I'm not living any longer in the power of my will and my grit. I am going to surrender to Jesus. I am going to be buried with him, and I am going to be raised with him. And the same spirit that raised him from the dead is going to be in charge of my life now." Because baptism is rebirth, it's not reset.

It's not sprinkling a little bit of Jesus on your old life. It is burying your old life and receiving new life in the power of the spirit. Again, listen to Paul, because he didn't just believe it, he lived it: "For we died and we were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives."

So I have a question. It's a good question. It's a biblical question. If you have not been baptized, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? You might think, "Well, pastor, I was baptized as an infant." Your parents wanted to dedicate you to Jesus. But there comes a moment in your life where, like Paul, you have to go public and declare, "Do I believe this story? Is it my story? Do I own it?"

You are actually honoring your parents' intentions when you get baptized. Some of you are thinking, "Well, I don't know enough to be baptized." You don't need to know. In other words, you're not made right with God by the amount of your knowledge, but by the amount of your confidence in Jesus. Do you believe that he is who he claimed—the Son of God?

Do you believe that he died for your sins and in the power of the spirit was raised from the dead and now has the right to be the Lord of your life? If you know that, you know enough. But some of you are thinking, "Pastor, I'm not good enough yet. I have really messed up, and when I get it together, then I'll present myself to Jesus."

Can I just say, you don't present yourself to Jesus because you're so good. You present yourself to Jesus because he's so good. You don't get your life all together and then come to Jesus. You come to Jesus and then he helps you start getting your life together. There's really only one reason you shouldn't get baptized today if you haven't been.

And that's because you don't believe. That you either don't believe Jesus is the Son of God risen from the dead, or even if you do, you don't want him running your life. Then don't you dare get baptized. Because it's not a ritual. It is a request for a new life surrendered to God. And that's what happens when you're willing to obey the Jesus that shows up.

And that's what you need to do. Because he's ready to show up today. Are you ready to listen to him? Are you ready to take a trip that will change your life?

Acappella Ministries: Well, you know that my times are in your hands. Oh, Lord, deliver me. And I praise you for your goodness as my soul demands. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. You will help the weak and needy and through all eternity. Oh, Lord, deliver me.

Yes, I call you and you answer me; there's never any doubt. Oh, Lord, deliver me. When surrounded by my enemies, you work it all out. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. You will help the weak and needy and through all eternity. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Deliver me, oh, Lord deliver me. Through all eternity, you will help the weak and needy and through all eternity. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Oh, Lord, deliver me. Deliver me, Lord. Oh, Lord, deliver me.

Cody Custer: So how about you? Are you ready to listen to Jesus? To take a step that could change your life forever? Are you ready to invite him in as Lord and Savior of your life? Well, today is the day. Don't wait. There is nothing more important than being in a right relationship with God. If you'd like to learn more about what that looks like, we would be honored to talk with you.

Or maybe you're ready to take that next step of baptism, something you've thought about for a long time but you haven't yet acted on it in obedience. Well, you can contact us by email at thechristianshour@gmail.com. We'd love to talk with you and help connect you with a local church in your area.

And if you've already experienced new life in Jesus, if he is Lord of your life and you've been immersed in the waters of baptism, have you shared that story with someone? Your story: how you encountered the living Christ, who you were before him, and what he has done in your life since. Friends, there is power in your story. Don't keep it to yourself. He deserves the glory.

Well, our thanks to Rick for reminding us of the good news. Not only that Jesus is alive, but that he is present and he invites us into an encounter with his living presence. And our thanks as well to Acappella Ministries for their music of worship.

If you'd like to listen to today's program again, you can visit our website. It's free and available to stream or download anytime at thechristianshour.org. That's thechristianshour.org. You can also find us on OnePlace, Google Play, and Apple Podcast. You can follow along with us on social media as well. Find us on Facebook and Instagram by searching Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where you'll see updates from our ministries all across the world. And of course, if you'd like to get in touch with us directly, you can email us again; that's at thechristianshour@gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll join us again next week.