Are You 'Appropriately Positioned' to Listen?

By: ChaplainRuss Mood: Teaching Date: 04/24/2008 11:11:05 Music: None

Acts 9:5

"'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied."

Saul's respectful response, "Who are you Lord?" acknowledges that he has had a supernatural experience and is "appropriately positioned" to listen -- he is on the ground (verse 9:4 "He fell to the ground..."). Many times the Lord needs to knock us to the ground -- literally or figuratively -- take our feet right out from under us to get our attention as well.

Have you ever had an experience like that before? When the Lord grabs you so dramatically and decisively (not because He wants to hurt you but because He wants your full and undivided attention), how did you respond? Did you change or did you go back to your old ways?The Lord then identifies Himself to Saul, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." I see a lot of my own history in this statement. In the past I have spent time in my own energy and power doing my will -- thinking it was probably the Lord's will -- without ever really checking with the Lord to see what He wanted me to do. Jesus is saying to Saul, "You think you are helping me, but when you hurt my church -- you are hurting me." It seems the only way the Lord could get Saul's attention was to knock him to the ground -- by doing so the Lord stopped him long enough to meet face to face.

My greatest prayer is that the Lord would open my ears and heart so that I would not need to be floored by some catastrophic event to become open to receiving a course correction from the Lord. As in steering a boat or a car, small and regular adjustments are much easier than huge and difficult adjustments when we have completely gone off course.

When you had your last encounter with God -- did you just get up and go about your business, or did you allow the Lord to speak to you in the experience? Saul asked the question, "Who are you Lord?" If you asked that question of the Lord right now, what behavior or attitude would He tell you to change?