A Damascus Road Experience

A Series on Spiritual Turning Points –
Words to describe God’s work in our life: Transformation
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Acts 9:1-31 

[God is always at work in our life – drawing us to him, helping us to become the person he created us to be and leading us to opportunities to serve him. In this series we will look at spiritual turning points in the lives of real people, and words that help us to understand how God works in us and through us. Sometimes this happens suddenly, sometimes gradually, but always with purpose.]

  

During the spring term of my sophomore year at Michigan Tech, my fiancé broke up with me for another guy. It turned my life upside down. 

Feeling depressed one night, I remember leaving my dorm room and going for a walk. Eventually, I laid down in the snow, looked up at the stars and cried out… “Why God”!

 

He didn’t answer me right then. But the following summer he brought Ken Baker into my life who shared with me about a personal relationship with Jesus. It’s not an overstatement to say that, as a result, my life took a whole new direction.

 

Saul, who later became Paul, was a Pharisee who meticulously obeyed the law. For Christians, he was a force to be reckoned with. In fact, following Stephen’s stoning, “a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem”. Saul was at the forefront.

 

³ But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.         NIV    Acts 8

 

However, Saul was obsessed in his hatred for Christians.

 

Damascus was the nearest important city to Jerusalem with a large Jewish population. It was a commercial center with caravans transporting merchandise from around the world traveling through it. Saul reasoned that if Christianity caught hold there, it would spread throughout the world. He had to stop it.

 

Therefore, he asked the high priest for letters to the synagogues in Damascus. These letters requested their cooperation, as well as gave Saul the authority to arrest any followers of Jesus that he discovered. Then he would take them as prisoners back to Jerusalem to be tried. This included both men and women.

 

But, as he approached the city, a “bright light from heaven flashed around him”. Then a voice spoke, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me”? It was Jesus. When Saul stood up, he was blind. Jesus told him to wait in Damascus.

 

In Damascus there was a believer named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision telling him to find Saul and lay his hands on him to restore his sight. But Saul’s reputation and the purpose of his trip had preceded him. Ananias protested.

 

¹⁵ But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.  NIV

 

It’s ironic that the Lord chose the man who was trying to destroy his church, to instead use him to grow it. Saul stayed in Damascus for several days where “he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God”.

 

Saul’s life was transformed on the road to Damascus. In a way, I had my own Damascus Road experience in college. For God is always at work in our life, in big and small ways, to transform us into the person he created us to be.

 

² Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.   NLT   Romans 12

 

Copyright 2026 Joseph B Williams

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