From Saul to Paul and How God Uses Broken Vessels

God Already Approved You

Before we get into Saul's mess, I need you to hear something. Jeremiah 1:5 says, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and I approved you as my chosen instrument."

Get rid of every self-esteem issue you're carrying right now. God has already approved you. If God approved you, why are you still worried about everybody else's opinion? Too many of us allow people to speak us into who we are not. You don't have the right to define me because you didn't create me. I already know what the Creator said about me.

Psalm 139 reinforces it: "You made me inside and out. You know every bone in my body. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth. All the stages of my life were spread out before you. The days of my life, all prepared before I'd even lived one day."

My mother used to say this in her Jamaican accent: "Jomo, what is for you, is for you." She was right. And Job 14:5 confirms it: God has determined your days. Your months are in His control. He's set the limits. So stop tripping and start living.

Tomorrow is not promised. If somebody hurt your feelings, call them and let it go. You know they're wrong. Let it go anyway. Give them some grace, even if you don't want to.

Saul's Resume Was Terrible

Now let's talk about Saul of Tarsus, because his resume before meeting Jesus was genuinely horrifying.

He was an accomplice to murder. Acts 7:59-8:1 tells us that when the crowd stoned Stephen to death, Saul was standing right there, congratulating the killers. That's not a footnote in his story. That's how he got introduced.

He systematically destroyed the church. Acts 8:3 says Saul was going everywhere to tear it apart, dragging men and women from their homes and throwing them in prison. He wasn't a casual critic of Christianity. He was running a campaign of terror.

He voted for executions. In Acts 26:10-11, Paul himself admits, "I not only locked up many of God's people in prison, but when they were condemned to death, I cast my vote against them. I punished them in the synagogues and tried to force them to blaspheme."

And in Galatians 1:13, Paul puts it plainly: "You've heard the story of my earlier life. I went all out persecuting the church of God. I systematically destroyed it."

That's his testimony. Violence. Witch hunts. Arrogance. Those were the only credentials he brought to Jesus. And God still chose him.

Even Then

Here's the part that gets me. Galatians 1:15 says that even then, even while Saul was doing all of this, "God had his eye on me. When I was still in my mother's womb, he chose me and called me, out of sheer generosity."

Even when you were in the club. Even when you woke up places you shouldn't have been. Even when you were living raggedy. Even when you were sipping on things you had no business sipping on. Even then, God already knew.

Here's what happens when you look at your life: all you see is puzzle pieces. Broken, scattered, disconnected. But God sees the finished product. You can't get past your issue because all you see is the broken piece in front of you. God sees the whole picture.

That's why Romans 8:28 says all things work together for good. Not just the good things. All things. The bad decisions, the painful seasons, the relationships that fell apart. And Galatians 6:9 says, "Do not get weary in doing good, for in due season you will reap."

If you've ever worked a puzzle, you know the first thing you do is find a corner piece. Everything builds from there. The Bible calls Jesus the chief cornerstone. Find the corner, and the rest starts to make sense.

So don't give up on your kids. Don't give up on your marriage. Don't give up on yourself. The Bible calls God the Author and the Finisher, and that word "finisher" also means editor. God can rewrite your story.

The Encounter on Damascus Road

Acts chapter 9 is where everything changes. Saul is on his way to Damascus with arrest warrants in his pocket, breathing threats against the disciples. He's convinced he's doing God's work by hunting down believers.

Then verse 3: "He was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. He fell to the ground and heard a voice: 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?'"

Saul says, "Who are you, master?"

"I am Jesus, the one you're hunting down."

Now here's what you need to understand. Jesus had already died and risen. Saul wasn't going after Jesus directly. He was going after believers. But Jesus took it personally. If you mess with one of God's kids, He takes it personally.

And here's why Jesus had to show up in person instead of sending someone to talk to Saul: this man had studied under Gamaliel, one of the greatest religious teachers of his time. He already knew every argument. He already had all the head knowledge. Paul's problem wasn't that he lacked information. His problem was that he had religion without relationship.

So Jesus said, "Let me introduce myself."

The Reboot

What happened next was a total system shutdown. God blinded Saul. Not to punish him, but to reposition him.

Think about it. Saul had been leading. He was in charge. He knew where he was going and how to get there. But God said, "For me to use you, you have to change positions. When you can't see, you don't know where you're going. So now you're going to walk by what you hear instead of what you see."

For three days, Saul was blind. Three days, the same number Jonah spent in the belly of the fish. The same number Jesus spent in the tomb. God was rebooting him. Shutting down the old operating system and installing a new one.

Romans 12:2 says, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." You will never hear God's will for your life until transformation happens. And the problem for some of us is that we're trying to skip to the next season without letting God finish the work He's doing in this one. We live in a Netflix world where we want to jump ahead. But you can't skip the season God is using to reshape you from the inside.

2 Corinthians 5:7 says, "We walk by faith, not by sight." If you're walking by sight, you're not walking by faith. Most of the sins in the Bible were driven by what someone saw. Eve saw the fruit and it looked good. David saw Bathsheba. You bought the car you couldn't afford because it looked right. Most of our issues are eye-driven.

That's why God blinded Saul. He said, "Stop looking at things that pull you off course. Just focus on my voice."

Romans 10:17 says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."

And Hebrews 11:1 adds, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." God wants you to flow through vision, not sight.

The Confirmation

While Saul was blind and praying in Damascus, God spoke to a disciple named Ananias through a vision. He told him to go find Saul and lay hands on him so he could see again.

Ananias protested. "Master, are you serious? Everybody's talking about this man. He's been terrorizing your people."

God's response in Acts 9:15: "Don't argue. Go. I have picked him as my personal representative."

Now here's something I don't want you to miss. God had already given Saul a dream showing him that a man named Ananias would come and lay hands on him. Why? So that when Ananias showed up, it wouldn't be revelation. It would be confirmation.

God gives you the dream first. Then He sends the person to confirm it. That's why sometimes someone says something to you and you think, "How did they know that?" Because God had already pressed it on your heart. You just didn't receive it. So He sent someone to confirm what He'd already shown you.

Prayer isn't about you telling God what you need. He already knows (Matthew 6:8). Prayer is about God downloading to you. Most of your prayer life should be spent listening, not talking. "Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening."

It's Not the Club, It's Whose Hands It's In

When Ananias laid hands on Saul, something like scales fell from his eyes. He could see again. He was baptized. He ate a meal. And before long, he was out telling everyone about Jesus.

Look at what Paul says about himself on the other side in 1 Timothy 1:13-16: "The only credentials I brought to it were violence, witch hunts, and arrogance. But I was treated mercifully because I didn't know what I was doing. Grace mixed with faith and love poured all over me, and all because of Jesus."

Then he says this: "Here's a word you can take to heart: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I'm proof. Public sinner number one."

Your testimony isn't for you. It's for the person standing right on the edge of trusting God who needs to see that someone else made it through the same mess they're in.

And here's the secret of Paul's life. Philippians 3:13: "One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead."

One thing. Not ten. One. Forget the past. The enemy of your future is your past. The reason relationships go bad is because you carry bad relationships into new ones. Your past experiences poison your present situation if you let them.

A basketball in my hands is worth maybe thirty dollars. In Steph Curry's hands, it's worth fifty million. A golf club in my hands is a yard decoration. In the hands of a pro, it wins championships. It's the same object. The difference is whose hands it's in.

You might feel like a raggedy club today. You might feel like God could never use someone like you. But it was never about you. It was always about whose hands you're in. The Bible says, "I am the Potter, you are the clay." Let God work on you. He knows all your issues. He knows all your broken places. You've tried doing it your way long enough, and you've made a mess.

Try Jesus.