Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.

Devotion based on Acts 9:19-22

Saul didn’t waste any time. Within days of his conversion and baptism, he was preaching about Jesus as the living Son of God—the very one that a week earlier he had dismissed as a dead blasphemer and whose followers he doggedly pursued to silence at any cost. Now he had added his own voice to theirs.

Saul didn’t send anyone out to the road between Jerusalem and Damascus to convince them. He didn’t expect others to have the same encounter with the risen Jesus that he had had there. Nor did he seek to gather forensic evidence that the one who appeared to him was really Jesus. Rather, Saul took them to the Bible. He pointed them to the many Old Testament prophecies of God’s promised Messiah, and he reminded them of all the things that Jesus did or said or suffered that perfectly fulfilled every one of those promises.

Have you come to see Jesus as the Son of God and your Savior? Maybe you didn’t always see things that way. Maybe you even ridiculed the idea in your past. But now you see Jesus for who he is. He loved you when you were unlovable. He died to pay your debt of guilt and shame before God, and now he lives to assure you that you are forgiven. That truth, that powerful truth, burns inside you. Because Jesus lives, you can help others see that they too have a way out of the world of misery and hopelessness that they find themselves trapped in. An old hymn says, “If you cannot speak like angels, if you cannot preach like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus. You can say he died for all.”

Prayer:

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.