Before & After: The Anatomy of Conversion

 “Before and After”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Sept 15, 2019

Text: Galatians 1:10-24 // Series: Galatians: Freedom Through Christ  

Welcome here, friends.  My name is Brad Sumner, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge and it is our privilege and pleasure to have you here with us today as we launch into the fall together.   

I grew up in a tradition that valued something called the personal testimony.  For those unfamiliar with it, the testimony was the story of your personal journey with Jesus.  It was usually structed as a kind of before and after narrative.  When I heard people in this tradition tell their stories, it became clear to me that we had tendency to preferer dramatic backstories, with dark and reckless pasts, turned around in a sudden moment of blazing light where the person met Jesus and everything changed and now they no longer struggled with besetting sin anymore.

As I teenager, as I listened to enough people give their testimonies, I became obsessed with the question:  Is my testimony dramatic enough?  I mean, the downside when other people have more radical conversion experiences than you, is that you can begin to doubt that your conversion experience is genuine.  For me, I came to faith as a child.  I hadn’t robbed any banks or done any cocaine pre-conversion.  But I can remember a moment – kneeling by the couch in the living room of our home in Dawson Creek, BC after a Bible story about Noah’s ark and how God rescued Noah’s family.  All I knew at that moment was that I wanted to be rescued.  

So faith can come dramatically and radically; it can also come quietly and early.  But it is also true that some people can’t name a specific moment in their before and after journey but they know that they know that Jesus lives in them & they are trusting Christ for salvation.  For them, it was a journey.

Puritan preacher Thomas Watson wrote: “The Lord does not tie himself to a particular way, or use the same order with all. He comes sometimes in a still small voice. Such as have had godly parents, and have sat under the warm sunshine of religious education, often do not know how or when they were called. The Lord did secretly and gradually instill grace into their hearts, as dew falls unnoticed in drops.” In other words, if you feel you have a “boring testimony”, that’s OK. 

We’re going to see today that when it comes to conversion it’s not the outward circumstances that are amazing.  It’s grace that is amazing.  There is no such thing as a dull salvation.  All is grace. 

We are looking this fall here at Jericho at the New Testament book of Galatians.  This is one of the earliest and most compact letters of the early Church, written by a leader in the Christian movement by the name of Paul.  Paul was a missionary and an apostle and he had planted a Christian community in the region of Galatia in modern day Turkey. And now he hears that there is trouble brewing. 

There were two main groups in this little church – Jewish background believers and those who did not possess Jewish heritage or cultural or ethnicity. But the problem is that some Jewish teachers were arguing that in order to become a “real” Christian, you had to follow the Jewish laws around kosher eating, Sabbath keeping and male circumcision. 

But the Christians from a non-Jewish background said “um, wait a minute:

(?) If I wasn’t a Jew BEFORE, do I have to follow Jewish laws AFTER I become a Christian?  In order to help answer this question, Paul shares his personal testimony with them.  But he does so in a way to help his readers understand how God works not only in his life, but in our lives and our world as well.  Our focus today will be on the kinds of testimony stories we tell and what is and is not going on before, during & after conversion. 

Turn with me in your Bibles or on your devices to Galatians 1:10-12

Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant. Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning. I received my message from no human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.”

Paul begins his testimony by reminding that that he had a unique experience of direct revelation – he didn’t come to saving faith by apologetics of someone explaining to him the 4 spiritual laws or listening to Christian radio. He didn’t even come into God’s family by someone sitting him down and explaining to him the reasonability of faith in God.  No, he came into God’s forever family by a direct encounter with Jesus. 

This is recorded in Acts 9, where Paul is on the road to Damascus.  Jesus appears to him in a vision.  He is knocked clean off his horse, he is blinded by the light, and he hears a voice that says to him “I am Jesus”. Paul experiences a radical and complete life-change.  Within a week, he is preaching that Jesus is the Messiah in the streets!  Acts 9:21 says that “all who heard him were amazed!”  Now THAT’S a radical before & after story!

But do you know friends, this kind of direct revelation is still happening today.  Talk to Gary and Betty Stevenson, who are supported workers with Jericho working amongst Muslim Background Believers.  Many of whom report seeing a vision of Jesus coming to them and revealing truth to them. 

It is in this part of Paul’s story that we learn the first of 4 truths about Conversion: That is it’s 1) More about the ‘WHO’ than the ‘HOW’.  How a person encounters Jesus is less important than that they encounter Jesus.

If you comb through the pages of Scripture, you can find multiple types of conversion experiences.  Zacchaeus the tax collector had a conversion of his wallet.  Under Philip’s Spirit-led instruction, the Ethiopian Eunuch had a conversion of his intellect as the Scriptures were explained to him.  The King and people of the city of Nineveh in the book of Jonah had a conversion away from injustice and violence based on a prophetic word.  In Acts 10, Cornelius and his household had a conversation experience based on preaching of Peter and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in power.  But no matter the circumstances or HOW salvation comes, the focus in the Scriptures is always on WHO they are encountering.  The story is and always should be about Jesus. Not so much on a single way or a single means by which people encountered Jesus.  There is a massive variety in the words that they prayed, the timing it took, the level of drama & much more.  Because few of us will have Paul’s level of drama

Famous atheist turned author and apologist for the Christian movement in the 20^th century C.S. Lewis describes his own conversion this way.  “I was driven to Whipsnade [Zoo] one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. “Emotional” is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.” 

You see, we sometimes get obsessed with counting the wrong things “Was their head bowed and eyes closed?  Did they say the right words?” Did we put it in the database somewhere?”  And while we want to avoid false or forced decisions, I think it can be helpful for us to step back for a moment and remind ourselves what is truly important.  That is “are people finding and following Jesus?”  This is why we exist as a church, friends.  We want to be the first choice in Willoughby-Clayton for the those who are spiritually seeking. Our vision is to be a beacon of hope to the weary and the wary.   

And as we do this, we are always keeping in mind that it’s always about the message and the response is the important thing, not the moment or the messenger.  Jesus should always be the hero of your story.

Paul goes on to share some of the “before” portion of his story.  Let’s keep reading in Galatians 1:13:16a

Paul had massive zeal.  But zeal, passionate activity, cannot get you to where you need to go.  This is not only true of Paul, it’s true of you and I today.  You cannot serve or act your way into God’s family.  You can’t give money to the capital campaign and hope to earn God’s favour. You can’t care for the poor so demonstrably or read your Bible so faithfully that you get God to love you.  All those are good things to DO, BUT our doing does not form the basis of our relationship with Jesus.  If it did, Paul would have been at the head of the line.  BUT he says I am not playing that game.

When it comes to conversion, here’s the second thing for us to remember

2) It’s not about what we DO but about what God, in Christ, has DONE

Look at the language switch.  In the previous verses, it’s all about Paul. I received, I persecuted the church.  Now notice the switch. It’s all GOD:

• “Before I was born, God chose me” (1:15)
• “God…called me by His marvelous grace”
• “God…revealed His Son to me / in me” (1:16)

Remember, Galatians is written to people who are being told that in order to be part of Jesus’ family, they need to DO things – observe Jewish ceremonial practices.  Circumcision, sabbath observance, food laws.  To this Paul says an emphatic NO!   Salvation is not about what you or I DO.  It is a gift of God.  This is all about God and what God has done.  This is why Paul is so emphatic to mention that God’s actions started before Paul was even born!  He had yet to do anything at all and God was in motion, calling and inviting Paul by God’s grace. 

This language here echoes the call narratives of the Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.  Paul is emphasizing the continuity between his ancestral faith and his belief in Jesus. And in all these cases, the call God places on these men was not just for the Jewish people, but for Isaiah and Jeremiah, and for Paul, they were to be messenger to the nations.  The fruit of true conversion is mission.  Paul simply could not keep this message about Jesus to himself!  

But then Paul disappears for a while…. This is an often-missed part of Paul’s story.  He logs off. Logs out.  He gets away to the dessert post Damascus road to process what in the world just happened to him.  Let’s keep reading as Paul continues his story in Galatians 1:16b-19

God not only gave Paul revelation BUT God also gave him a mission / commission.  He was to proclaim the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles.  BUT before he does this, he does some soul searching.  He goes into the dessert, Arabia.  Then he returns to Damascus to preach. 

This is something that we need to pay attention to in our own lives: 3) We have to do business WITH God before we can do business FOR God. 

Any fruitful and lasting public ministry that God allows you by God’s grace to experience will always be the fruit of a deep and rich private life with Jesus.  Power for witness and mission comes from that quiet place of reflection where you sit at Jesus’ feet and pay attention to what God is saying to you today and each day. 

This is why we encourage a daily Bible reading plan here at Jericho called Project 3:45.  It’s in the app. It takes, on average, 3 minutes and 45 seconds to read the average chapter in the New Testament.  And that’s why we invest time and energy in things like our Youth Bible Reading plan which Mike launched this past week.  Or like the small group that Jenna and Katelyn will be leading on Wednesday mornings at 6 AM that huddles up at the Starbucks at 72 and 200^th St to read and journal together. 

Paul here models a focused kind of time with God.  The practice of retreat.  He is again mirroring his activities after the ancient prophets like Elijah.  When he says he went to Arabia, that’s where Sinai is – the place where the mountain where the people of Israel met with God when the left Egypt.  The place where the prophet Elijah went to hear God speak in a time of great discouragement.   Paul is modelling a spiritual practice of retreat.  To clear your head.  To allow God to speak. Psalm 46:10 says BE STILL

For me, I’m not always successful at this but I try to invest one hour per day and one day per month in a place where I am quiet and listening to God.  I get up early, some days I don’t love it, some days I don’t’ feel any different when I finish, but it’s a discipline I want to keep cultivating.  One day per month I try to get away from the office and spend the day in prayer for the church and listening to God’s voice.  Usually I resist this day because I’m wired up activistically and I want to get stuff done.  But I always benefit from it.  I come back with a renewed sense of clarity. 

Let me ask you this: Are you creating room for your soul to breathe?  To allow time to process things you are learning?  Paul needed to get away to the dessert to do this.  Maybe you just need to get up a few minutes earlier or carve out a space in the day to practice being still and listening to God. Maybe you listen to the audio Bible on your commute in or you go to pick up the kids a few minutes early from school and sit in the car and journal.  Find a way that works for you because you have to do business with God before you can do meaningful and lasting business FOR God. 

Finally, Paul finishes his personal testimony with a focus on the “after” portion.  Let’s finish the chapter and read Galatians 1: 20-24.

Paul says that his conversion experience resulted in other people giving glory to God.  In other words, conversion or salvation

4) It’s always PERSONAL but never PRIVATE

Conversion is a personal, internal event.  That’s why people sometimes use the language of asking Jesus into their life or heart.  But it is never meant to stay that way!  God did not call you into his family just for you.

The fruit of true conversion is mission.  Paul simply could not keep this message about Jesus to himself and neither should you and I.  Last week, I shared how I was nervous about how to share Christ with my new neighbours.  So I began to pray and ask God for wisdom and an open door.  This week, I pull up and the new neighbor is outside and so I go over and introduce myself and she says “do you know the reverend that lives next door?  My daughter has been asking about going to church.”  Um, yes I do.  Praise God I had the open door I was praying for & will keep praying for.  What doors for mission are you asking God to open for you?   

You see, friends, faith is not about seeing how many blessings God is going to pour into your life as a result of your salvation.  Conversion is not about you being plucked off the dark and hopeless pathway you may have been on.  You and I have been saved and redeemed so that we can proclaim the Good News about Jesus to others.  Church, we have been placed here in this city so that the lost will be welcomed home.  So that the weak can say that they have found strength in Jesus.  I love how contemporary author and philosopher James K.A. Smith expresses this.

“Conversion is not a ‘solution’. Conversion is not a magical transport home, some kind of Floo powder to heaven. Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road; it just changes how you travel.”

- James K. A. Smith (On the Road with Saint Augustine).  Our calling, our mission is to make a difference in the lives of our fellow travellers. Not simply to get plucked off the road but to travel with a new set of eyes.  

As Ruth Ellen and Jared and the worship team come, I want to ask you to pause and reflect on a few questions for application this morning.  They are all phrase in the negative so

• Don’t compare your conversion experience to others (esp. not Paul’s!)

God saved you in the way that God chose to save you – it may not have been as dramatic and your neighbour, but don’t discount it either. 

• Don’t try to come to God on the basis of merit or works: come by grace alone.

You might be here today and you’ve been focused on trying to earn God’s favour.  You may not even consciously put it like that but all your life you are doing, doing, doing and today Jesus is coming to you and saying “friend, I have already DONE everything necessary for you to have peace with God!” Today is your day to stop reaching, grasping, striving. Simply receive.  Pray and say “Jesus, with open hands and heart, I receive you”  

The third question is for those who perhaps, like me, as activists. 

• Don’t try to do great things for God without spending deep time with God

Maybe the action item for you today is to re-order your schedule so you can get more time alone with God to learn to listen to God.  That’s one of the great gifts of a small group – they can help you with this.  Join one! 

The final encouragement is that for us individually and also for Jericho corporately,

• Don’t let your faith become too private

One of the reasons we are renovating this space is so that we can be a light to the neighbourhood. So that more people can come through these doors and can more effectively see and interact with us.  Perhaps for you, you have let your faith become something that nobody knows about.  Your fellow students or coworkers might think of you as a good person or a nice person but would they attribute that to the saving work of Christ in you?  Maybe it’s time for you to pray for an open door.  Then invite them to come join you here at Jericho or to youth Group this week or out for a coffee to talk about the struggles they may be having in their life and you’re going to be bold and offer to pray with and for them.

That’s also our practice here at Jericho – every week, we have people.  Today that is Tyler, Ann Marie, Meg and myself.  Would you stand with me and let me pray with us and for us today.