Does Your Past Disqualify You From What God Wants to Do Next?

Acts 9 and grace that changes the direction of a life

By Pastor John Erickson

There are some stories in the Bible that would be hard to believe if we didn't already know how they ended.

The conversion of Saul is one of them.

Imagine being part of the early church. You've heard the stories about this man. He isn't merely somebody who disagrees with Christians. He's trying to destroy the church. People have been arrested. Families are afraid. Stephen has been killed, and Saul approves of it.

And then somebody walks into your gathering and says, "Good news. Saul is one of us now."

You'd probably have a few questions. Maybe you'd ask somebody to check the doors.

But Acts 9 shows us something I think we desperately need to remember: God is not limited by the story we tell about someone's past.

Saul Was the Person Nobody Expected

Saul wasn't a casual opponent of Jesus. Acts describes him pursuing Christians, entering homes, and taking people away as prisoners. He even obtained authorization to go to Damascus to find more followers of the Way.

From the perspective of the church, Saul was the problem. If you were praying for the church to grow and the gospel to spread, the most obvious prayer might have been, "God, please stop that guy."

And God did stop him. Just not in the way anyone expected.

On the road to Damascus, Saul encountered the risen Jesus. The man who was convinced he was doing God's work discovered he was actually opposing Jesus himself.

That's a pretty significant course correction.

Sometimes we describe Christianity as though it's simply a matter of improving ourselves. Get your act together. Make better choices. Be a little nicer. Those are not bad things, but they don't explain what happens here.

Saul didn't just become a more agreeable version of the man he used to be. His entire understanding of God and his own mission was turned upside down.

Jesus met the man who was headed in the wrong direction and gave him a new one.

Nobody Is Too Far Gone

I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the story. Because we all have people we've quietly decided are beyond hope.

Maybe there's a family member you've prayed for again and again. Perhaps there's someone whose behavior is so cruel or destructive you cannot imagine them ever changing. Or maybe there's a person who has hurt you, and the thought of God showing them mercy is difficult to swallow.

Now, Acts 9 doesn't suggest that the harm Saul caused was imaginary or unimportant. The church had real reasons to fear him. Grace does not erase the responsibility to protect people from harm.

But it does challenge our certainty about who God can reach.

If God can reach Saul of Tarsus while Saul is actively trying to stamp out the church, perhaps we should be a little slower to declare that somebody else is hopeless.

And that includes us.

Some people aren't convinced that other people are beyond God's mercy. They're convinced that they are.

They replay what they've done. The words they said. The years they wasted. The people they hurt. They know God forgives sin in theory, but they suspect their own story might be an exception.

Saul's life stands as a contradiction to that assumption.

Ananias Had a Reason to Be Afraid

The story gets even more interesting when another disciple enters it.

God tells a man named Ananias to go find Saul and pray for him. Ananias responds with what I think is a perfectly reasonable objection: "Lord, I've heard about this guy."

That's not a lack of faith so much as a pretty accurate news report.

Ananias knows what Saul has done. He knows Saul came to Damascus with authority to arrest followers of Jesus. And now he's supposed to walk into the room and lay hands on him?

I love the honesty of that moment. God calls him, and Ananias doesn't immediately pretend he's thrilled.

But God tells him to go, and he goes.

He walks into that house and addresses the man everyone fears as "Brother Saul."

Two words. What an extraordinary expression of trust in what Jesus is doing.

Ananias doesn't excuse Saul's past. He also doesn't force Saul to remain imprisoned by it. He participates in God's new work in Saul's life.

That is a challenging picture of discipleship: listening to God, stepping outside our comfort zone, and becoming part of someone else's restoration.

I know how easily I can put too much pressure on myself in those moments. I need to find exactly the right words, put them in exactly the right order, and somehow convince the person in front of me.

But I cannot do the work of the Holy Spirit for someone. Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 3:6: he planted, Apollos watered, and God made it grow. Ananias had a real part to play. He was not responsible for becoming Saul's savior. Neither am I responsible for becoming anyone else's.

Don't Let Yesterday Write Tomorrow

Here's where this gets personal for me.

I know what it's like to look backward and feel disqualified. I can remember mistakes and failures and think, I don't know if I'm the person for that. What about what happened before?

Maybe you've had that conversation with yourself too.

Knowing something in my head and feeling it in my heart are not always the same thing. I notice that even in ordinary life: people can explain air travel to me, and I am still more nervous as a plane takes off than when I back out of my driveway.

Grace can meet a similar gap. I may know the right words about forgiveness while still living as though yesterday has disqualified me. I need to keep returning to what Jesus has actually done, letting that truth reach the places where insecurity still lives.

One of the things we see in Scripture is that God is remarkably willing to work with people whose records are less than impressive. Saul isn't even the first example. Moses resisted his calling. David made devastating choices. Peter denied Jesus.

This doesn't mean our past has no consequences. Repentance matters. Making amends matters. Learning to live differently matters.

But our past does not get the final vote on what God can do in our future.

God did not call Saul because his record was clean. He called Saul because of grace, and that grace began transforming him into someone who would carry the gospel to people who had never heard it.

So maybe the question isn't whether you're qualified enough to be useful to God.

Maybe the question is whether you're willing to let Jesus change the direction you're going.

Because if Saul's story teaches us anything, it's this: nobody is beyond the reach of Jesus. Not the person you're praying for. Not the person you struggle to love.

And not you.