Acts 9

There are so many people in the world that think need to wait for the right moment to follow Jesus. Or, maybe really want to follow Jesus, but you just don’t know exactly what that looks like. You see your friend who is a believer and you can see a difference in the way he is compared to everyone else and you really want to be just like that, but you just can’t figure it out. You want to make a change but you feel like you’ve tried and tried again, and you just can’t do it.

I want to tell you think morning, friend, that the Bible says you can’t make a change. You just can’t do it. You can’t clean yourself up to come to God. You can’t even almost halfway kinda do that. You have to have someone that has no sin at all to do that kind of thing. And the only person with no sin at all is God himself.

That’s why God himself came to step in to save us. See, only God—Yahweh/Jehovah God— is clean enough, pure enough, righteous enough, powerful enough—to reach down to save a human soul. to make a change in your life. You can’t do that on your own.

So, you need to stop thinking to yourself “man, you know, one day I’m going to make a change.” That’s not what we see in scripture, so we can know, that’s not what’s going to happen in your life.

Instead of trying to clean your act up to come to God, you must come to him with a humble heart and just proclaim to him, “God, I admit that I CAN’T clean my act up/ I can’t clean my heart up; I can’t clean my life up. I can’t re-write my story.

God, I need YOU to rewrite my story....because that is exactly what we see in the scriptures.

One particular place in scripture that is on my heart this morning is in book of Acts chapter 9. You know the book of Acts is kind of like the sequel to the gospel of Luke—because the writer of Luke is most probably the same writer of the book of Acts. We know this because the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts are both addressed to “most excellent Theophilus.” There’s other reasons too, but moving on, we see in the book of Acts chapter 9 that Saul was going persecuting God’s church.

He was killing christians, and he definitely had NO desire to clean up his act in the presence of God. To be honest, he thought he was doing a good job for Jehovah God, because he had the wrong worldview.

You know world view is such an important concept to understand. Your worldview is how you see the world. If you see the world through a perspective that is sincere, but jadded—you can be sincere, and be sincerely wrong. You know? And, that is kind of how Paul was. He was so sincere. He was so passionate.

You know it is good to be a passionate person. But, if you take all that passion and put it toward the wrong thing, what does it profit you, you know?

And so, Paul’s worldview was jadded. Paul’s passion was placed in the wrong place, or toward the wrong cause. And he had no desire to clean his act up, becasue to be honest, he probably had no idea he needed cleaning up; after all, he was a Jew among Jews, as he liked to put it.

I guess the point I want to make this morning is found in Paul’s conversion. He was riding on the Damascus road, one day. The Bible doesn’t say, Paul met Jesus on the Damascus road there, and he got off his horse and went over to Jesus, knelt down at his feet, said the sinners prayer, and became saved. No it doesn’t say that! No, it says, Jesus knocked Paul off of his horse. And Paul was forever changed.

Jesus, literally knocked Paul off his horse on the damascus Road, and called him out of darkness into his marvelous light. Paul didn’t say to Jesus, ok, Jesus today I’m going to make a change. No, Paul simply had to say to Jesus Christ, Jesus—I surrender.

And that’s what I want for you today. That’s what God wants for you. Maybe you’re not on the damascus road this morning. But, maybe you’re riding down a Kentucky Highway. Maybe, right now as you’re traveling, or wherever you are, God is speaking to your heart—you can’t do this any longer. Maybe, like Paul, God is calling you this morning—not to try to do GOOD, because according to the scriptures, none of us can do good. we are naturally sinners, evil, wicked. But, maybe God is calling you to SURRENDER to him.

I want to invite you this morning to make the decision to follow Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior this morning.