Gear Up

As we read the stories of the Bible, it’s good to remember how we tell our own stories. We don’t relate everything that happened in detail and we may not even get events in exact order. If you ask me about my education and life as a young man, I’ll tell you that I went to college, then grad school, then seminary, then accepted a call to my first church in Nebraska. And I’ll put in that during grad school I met my wife and we were married, maybe backing up to offer the detail that I was engaged to someone else before I met Beth. If you’re trying to get it all down on a time-line it might be confusing and there may even be some important events left out. Almost certainly whole years may be passed over without even a mention.

That’s what we encounter in the next part of Paul’s story as told by Luke in Acts 9:23-31. Verse 23 gives us a little clue in the phrase, “After some time had passed…” Verse 26 is less clear, but we learn in Galatians 1:18 that “When he had come to Jerusalem…” is probably three years after the escape described in verse 25.

The truth is that we cannot be at all certain of exactly in what order events unfolded at this time in Paul’s life and ministry. The big piece missing in our text from Acts is found in Paul’s telling of his own story in Galatians 1. There in verse 17 he tells us that he went away and spent time in Arabia before returning to Damascus.

Paul’s point in Galatians 1 is that his sojourn in Arabia, however long it was, was a time of preparation, a time when he received directly from the Lord some of the Gospel message that he preached as an apostle. His concern was to answer the charge that he was not a true apostle, that the Lord had not appeared to him and given him a specific charge and message. His Arabian interlude seems to have been the time in which God confirmed and gave Paul his message to non-Jews.

So you could say that this Sunday’s message is about what’s not there in our text, that gap between Acts 9:25 and 9:26 which seems to be the journey to Arabia. Like Jesus Himself spending 40 days in the wilderness or Moses out on the mountain meeting God or Elijah waiting for God in his cave, Paul prepared for his mission by gearing up spiritually in an attitude of prayer and attentiveness.

Last week I spoke about how essential Christian community, the Body of Christ, is to the development of our faith. This week we see that there is certainly a place for a private devotion and storing up of spiritual energy in one-on-one communion with the Lord. As my wife likes to say, it’s not either-or, it’s both-and. Alongside what we gain in fellowship and sharing with each other, we are also equipped for Christian living and service by time alone with God. May He give us grace to order ourselves in ways that include both that corporate dimension and that individual dimension of spiritual life.