Paul

What happens when the very thing we have built our identity around becomes the thing that blinds us to the truth? That is the question at the heart of the Apostle Paul's story, and it is a question worth sitting with. In Acts 22, we encounter Paul standing before an angry crowd, not running from his past but declaring it openly. He was trained under the greatest teachers, zealous beyond his peers, and utterly convinced he was right. And that conviction led him to persecute, imprison, and approve the deaths of followers of Jesus. His story forces us to ask ourselves: what narratives have we built around our identity, and are those narratives actually true? The enemy is skilled at taking real experiences, real words spoken over us, real wounds from a broken world, and twisting them into beliefs we live out as though they are gospel. Paul's transformation from persecutor to proclaimer did not begin with a better argument or a stronger willpower. It began with an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, a moment so disorienting it left him physically blind. Whatever our own moment of surrender looked like, dramatic or quiet, the invitation is the same: to let the story of the gospel collide with our story and change everything.