When you really look at it, the story of Saul’s conversion and transformation into Paul is downright wild. Here’s a man who hates Christians so much that he’s on his way to get permission to eliminate even more of them. Then out of nowhere on the road he gets blasted off his donkey, spoken to by Jesus, and then immediately blinded. It’s a lot for a Tuesday. Saul’s companions help him into town where he languishs in bed for three days. But then a newcomer enters the story.
Somewhere on the other side of town, a man called Ananias is about to get called on in a big way. Ananias get’s the tiniest amount of screen time but he’s an incredible believer that we can all learn from.
Minding his own business and trying to stay out of trouble in a world very actively opposed to Christians, Ananias instead gets a calling from the Lord telling him to seek out Saul and pray over him.
““The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas. When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying to me right now. I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again.” “But Lord,” exclaimed Ananias, “I’ve heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem! And he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest everyone who calls upon your name.” But the Lord said, “Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel. And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.”” (Acts 9:11-16)
Ananias is, quite understandably, worried about the whole idea of going to visit Saul. We have the benefit of hindsight. We know that Saul became Paul and went on to do incredible things for the Kingdom. But how easy would have been for Ananias to believe that in the moment. God may have told him what Saul would do, but I have to imagine Ananias was much more concerned with what Saul had done. His perspective was wildly different.
For all he knew, he was serving himself up to Saul on a great big platter with an extra serving of martyrdom. Conventional wisdom would tell Ananias that it was suicide to go to the house of one of the greatest known enemies to Christians, loudly proclaim you are one, and pray for the person who could have you killed for it. If anything, the knowledge of Saul’s whereabouts would have been useful for Ananias to know exactly where not to go that week.
And yet Ananias went.
He went despite the risks. He went despite the fear. He went despite the most likely outcome that would see him murdered for his faith. He went anyway. If that doesn’t tell you something about Ananias’ unwavering faith I don’t know what will.
Ananias didn’t know the outcome. He just knew what he was supposed to do. And rightly he paid more attention to that instead of his own fears. We all need a little more of that in our lives.
There will be times when God asks you to step out in faith without a roadmap of all possible outcomes. In those moments, our responsibility is not to do the rest of the work to find out if we’ll be ok. Our responsibility is to act in faithfulness to God’s call. That’s it. That’s all that’s required of us. God doesn’t need us to present him a safety plan. He needs us to obey him and trust that he might just know what he’s doing. You are not God’s contingency planner.
And yes, stepping out in faith like Ananias will be terrifying. Hopefully you won’t be in such life threatening positions as him, but you do have to be ready to step out in faith.
So how do we make ourselves ready like Ananias? Work on being faithful now, when things are steady and normal and calm. We need to do the work to be readily faithful now to respond with readiness when God asks us to step into faith.
There’s a saying (terribly paraphrased by me here), that in an emergency we don’t rise to the occasion but rather fall to the level of our training. Spiritual readiness is no different. If we never consider that God might as big things of us, we’ll be completely unprepared and panicky when he does. But if we instead bury ourselves in the word and the reality of what trials we might encounter as believers we will make ourselves ready to respond quickly and readily when He says it’s go time.
Get in the word. Ruminate on what Jesus says about faithfulness and readiness and take it to heart. You’ll start to see that it’s not particularly warm or fuzzy. It’s the stuff of being battle ready. That’s no accident. Practice acting quickly and decisively in faith with the small things in your life and talk to God constantly asking him to help you learn.
Because it’s not a matter of if God asks you to step out into faith but when. Are you ready? Or at least as ready as you can be? Would you be ready to go to work for Christ? Or would you balk at the loss of your comfort? Only you can answer those questions and do business with them. But if we want to have courage like Ananias, ready to step out in faith and love even when death seems the most likely outcome, we need to consider our readiness to behave so.
Ananias wasn’t perfect. His first response was something along the lines of “Oh no no no. Please no.”. But what matters is that he went. Despite the fear, despite all self preservation speaking to the contrary, despite the reluctance he went. And as we know now, we see why it was vital that he did. He prayed for Saul whose sight was restored and the incredible leader Paul was born. If Ananias had said no, God could have certainly found someone else to act on his plan, but how horrible for Ananias to miss out on so much goodness.
May we not miss out when it’s our turn to do the same. May God find us ready to act.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 