Acts 9:1-22

To show through Saul’s experience on the Damascus Road the real meaning of conversion.

Difficulty of Leaving Old Life

For 11 years a man named Merhan Karimi Nasseri was a man without a country. For 11 years he lived in a Paris airport. He had no passport. He had no citizenship. He had no papers that enabled him to leave the airport or fly to another country. He had been expelled from his native country of Iran. Then he was sent away from Paris, France because he lacked documentation. He said his Belgian-issued refugee document had been stolen. He flew to England but was denied entry and sent back to Paris. When he was returned to the Paris airport in 1988, airport authorities allowed him to live in Terminal 1, and there he stayed for 11 years, writing in a diary, and living off of handouts from airport employees, cleaning up in the bathroom.

Then in September 1999, the situation reversed. French authorities presented Nasseri with an international travel card and a French residency permit. Suddenly he was free to go anywhere he wanted. But when airport officials handed him his walking papers, to everyone’s surprise, he simply smiled, tucked the documents in his folder, and resumed writing in his diary. They found he was afraid to leave the bench and table that had been his home for 11 years. As the days passed and Nasseri refused to leave, airport officials said they would not throw him out of the airport, but they would have to gently and patiently coax him to find a new home.

Can you imagine a more unnatural home than an airport? It is bustling, it is interesting, but it is not home. When we come to Christ, we have a move to make that can be as frightening as the move Nasseri had to make from the airport. We are beckoned from the unnatural home of the ways of this fallen world to our new home; the ways of the kingdom of God. Don’t hold back. *

The experience of Saul, who later became Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ, is somewhat different than Nasseri’s, but his experience is a good lesson to us in the real meaning of conversion or change.

It is seen in several ways

• In the purpose of Saul (Acts 9:1-2)
  • His purpose was to defeat the Christian faith and remove Christians
    • He was present when Stephen was martyred
    • He made havoc of the church (Acts 8:3)
  • His design for Damascus Christians
    • Take them as prisoners to Jerusalem
    • All of this was in the name of God. He thought he was servicing God.
• In the plan of God
  • Change a person
    • God uses different methods to bring change
      • He got Saul’s attention
        • Light
        • A voice
      • He gave him a minister
        • Annanias
  • God’s design (Acts 9:15)
    • A chosen vessel to bear my name before the Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel
• The power of change (Acts 9:20)
  • It was immediate
  • It was immense
    • He preached before
      • The Children of Israel
      • Kings
      • Gentiles

Therefore, through Saul’s experience, we can see the real meaning of conversion; that is the change God brings in a life that is given to Him.

Certainly, every person’s experience does not duplicate Saul’s in the details, but it does have the common characteristic of a change in life.

From this experience, Saul’s life took on a meaning and purpose that He had never ever known or possibly could envision.

*Adapted from Ray Moseley, “At Last, Airport ‘Prisoner’ Gets His Walking Papers,” Chicago Tribune (September 21, 1999); Suzanne Daley, “11 Years Caged in an Airport; Now He Fears to Fly,” New York Times (September 27, 1999)