How can a puny man, with his minute intellect, know who he is dealing with? God in His power, His wisdom and mercy, can convert the worst of sinners, just as He can convert a self-righteous one, who is often seems to be the hardest to convert, into a servant of Christ and into a member of His great family! God has His plan and He is still working at it. The Holy Spirit as long as there remains a sinner to save will remain on earth to do it! The conversion of Saul of Tarsus, is an outstanding miracle, but all conversions are miracles, the Holy Spirit alone can bring such a change, but not all are as that of Paul, yet all point to the grace of God and His amazing love for lost undeserving sinners! Turning a sinner into a son of God takes all the power and the great love of God. Of all miracles it is the greatest!

We find in the Scriptures, that Paul does mention his previous life quite often. How mercifully God changed him is known of every born-again person, I am talking about a person being born-again of the Holy Spirit. There is this story of two lives, the old which is gone and the new which is come, eternal, the life of God! yet it is lived in the same body, which makes the miracle even greater. This deep change is an act of the Holy Spirit; it is what is called ‘conversion’. To be a Christian does not mean being a better man, although the new man is a lot better than the old! I say so, because I know that some people change and become better after a decision they make of their own will. I have met a man that abused his wife for seven years! she feared him with all the family! He was most violent with his servants also, but something happened to him, for he changed completely and never beat his wife again; he became another man. I saw him a few times in a church I visited few times to minister on Sundays, as far as I know he never became a Christian, but I know that he never asked to be baptised.

The basis of such a change, is good works, the will of the flesh. It is always good to be better, kinder like, less selfish, stop womanising, etcetera, but the source of such a change is not the conversion which is done by the Holy Spirit; conversion is a totally different thing, such a change follows man’s faith in Jesus Christ and a surrender to His Lordship; as Paul said: ‘Lord what do you want me to do?’ And when the Lord told him what to do, he did it, and he did it for the rest of his life in obedience to the Lord! Many people think that by becoming better, they have a better chance to go to heaven, or whatever they call it? We all know that we are not on earth forever, but the after-life never ends, it is therefore very foolish to take a chance on eternity, the alternative to heaven is hell! Being a Christian is becoming another person, born of the Holy Spirit, a ‘converted’ person is for the first time in her life in a relationship with God, and she grows to know Him as her Father, and at death she goes into Paradise!

Paul does mention that very clearly in his epistle to the Galatians, the expresses the life he lived and the man that he was. He was on his way to Damascus as I have stated, bent on destroying as many disciples of Christ as possible, he undertook an impossible task for the Church grew by the thousands; but Jesus had another plan for his life and met Saul of Tarsus! when he was in this foul, hateful mood, and yet, regardless of his dreadful intentions, and all the suffering he caused to many Christians in Jerusalem, as he was nearing Damascus, from a dazzling light, in His risen glory, Jesus spoke to him and from that moment a great change happened deep inside him; unbeknown to Saul, he was a new man. It all happened by the grace of God who chose him from even before his mother’s womb, to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, a co-builder of His Church which he planned to destroy! I never get tired of mentioning it, for it does my soul good! Not all Christians have such a tremendous conversion, but a conversion they have. Christ meats us in different ways, at different times, and circumstances, but all Christians know, that from a certain moment in their life, they were changed and started a different life, and to them Jesus became very real! Meditate on the verses written above, it will help you! Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you and He will. If you have not yet given your life over to the Lord, do it now!