As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” — Acts 9:1-25

As my wife sat nervously with a few of the high school girls in one of the tents set up for a retreat she was leading, the Indiana summer thunderstorm raged on.

Lightning, thunder and driving rain made it impossible to sleep and virtually impossible to hear each other’s voices.

And then, “Boom!” the lightning and thunder hit at the exact same moment.

Pieces of a glowing nearby tree hit their tents.

With flashlights on, every one of the girls’ hair was sticking straight up in the air!

Saul truly believed he was doing God a favor by persecuting followers of Jesus.

He was a religionist of the highest order.

He was a hard-core traditionalist who vehemently rejected any Messiah except the one he had framed in his own mind.

This Jesus was a fraud and his followers were liars and deceivers and must be stopped.

Nothing short of being “struck by lightning” could move this man from his brutal quest.

Down fell Saul. Up rose Paul.

While God’s plans for Saul required this extremely unusual and dramatic intervention, this ending of one person and the arrival of another is exactly what Jesus meant for all of us when he said, “You must be born again.”

Only God can make us anew.

It’s not a rehabilitation. It’s not a transformation. It’s not an education. It’s not a realization.

It’s a death and a new birth.

It’s being struck by the lightning of God’s saving grace.

We simply cannot be the same once we truly embrace it.

Disguised

The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “As we go into battle, I will disguise myself so no one will recognize me, but you wear your royal robes.” So the king of Israel disguised himself, and they went into battle. — I Kings 22:1-38

As the search for the 10 disguised “suspects” continued, one of them sat in the wide-open food court of the mall enjoying a little dinner with his pretend family.

With some facial hair, a hat, a wife and a child, he successfully eluded groups of highly competitive teens who were searching passionately for him.

Hiding in plain sight, he looked so normal that no one recognized his disguise.

Ahab, the king of Israel was truly a mess.

His knowledge of God and occasional humbling of himself before him only added to the darkness of the evil that ultimately swallowed him up.

After being told he would die in a particular battle by God’s prophet, he decided to go into it anyway.

Somehow, he convinced the other king to dress like a king and he would go in disguise. — I’ll fool God. I’ll thwart his plan. I got this.

However, one lone, random arrow exposed his folly.

If we truly love Jesus, our lives are intended to reveal that reality.

Jesus told us to let our light shine.

Return good for evil.

Pray for those who persecute you.

Love your enemies.

Turn the other cheek.

Be a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Lose your life for his sake.

The last thing this world needs is one more person wearing a follower-of-Jesus disguise.

A day of good news

Finally, they said to each other, “This is not right. This is a day of good news, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone! If we wait until morning, some calamity will certainly fall upon us. Come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace.” — 2 Kings 6:24-7:20

“Your car’s ready,” he said.

My mind began to race to an estimate of how much the repair was going to be.

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Maybe, the “fix” was a short-term solution and the big repair was inevitable later.

Preoccupied in thought, I failed to ask any questions before we ended the call.

As I walked in the next day, he said, “Good news!” Whenever your doctor, dentist or mechanic greets you with “good news,” it’s celebration time!

The Israelites were in trouble. Surrounded by the enemy, their capital city was slowly being starved to death and their king could do nothing about it.

Four lepers decided their only hope of survival was surrender.

They took off for the enemy camp and found it abandoned.

The Lord had already intervened, but the people in the city didn’t know.

They were free, but remained imprisoned. Even though they were outcasts, the lepers knew this good news still had to be shared.

At Jesus’ birth, the angel declared, “I bring good news that will bring great joy to all the people. The Savior — yes, the Messiah, the Lord — has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!”

Physical salvation is one thing, but spiritual salvation is something completely different.

If we have embraced the Good News about Jesus, if we are experiencing the wonder of being forgiven, if we are living in the strength he provides, how can we keep this Good News to ourselves?

Tom Wiles is senior minister of Fall Creek Christian Church in Pendleton. He can be reached at 765-778-3166.