conversion

We live in an 'instant' age.

And that sort of thinking can sometimes slip into the way we expect God to work. As if his way of working was to snap his fingers and all of a sudden, out of the blue, and in one quick moment of action dramatic change has occurred.

We read the story of Saul's conversion like that. From sinner to saint in an instant. A flash of God's lightning, the man gets zapped, and all of a sudden this man who's been antagonistic has become a born-again Christian.

Not quite magic, but the Christian equivalent. A Christianised abracadabra (prayer), then a cloud of dust and a 'rabbit' appears from the conjurer's hat in the form of some person now coming to faith.

And having read of it happening like that in Saul's life, we expect it all of the time.

No wonder we're disappointed! Because there are two big flaws in our thinking like that.

The first big flaw is that Saul's becoming a Christian is not to be viewed as the norm.

It can happen like that. It does happen like that. 'Dramatic' conversion experiences do occur. No question about it. I've seen it happen myself.

And there are no two ways about it - it's a thrilling and humbling thing to see God at work like that in a person's life. Bringing a person out of the 'dominion of darkness' and into the light of Christ in what seems like an instant of time. It's wonderful. It fills me with awe when I see it.

But, rather like the sunrise, it's not like that in everyone, by any means.

I've been in Africa and I've seen the way the sun can rise and set out there.

Near the equator, the shift from light to darkness at the end of the day is really very rapid. It's almost like in the time it takes you to blink, you've moved from bright and shining light to a thick all-encompassing darkness.

And the same in the morning, of course, as the sun comes up. Darkness into light in what seems like no more than a moment.

But most of us don't live by the equator. And most of the time the shift from darkness to light in the early hours of the morning is a much more subtle thing, spread over hours.

I once went out to watch the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee. It seemed like a good idea when I went to bed at 10.30pm the night before and set my alarm for 4am (I wasn't quite sure just when the sun would rise, but I figured that 4am was a safe-ish sort of starting time).

The experience was an interesting one, for sure. At 4am it was dark. Really dark. At 5am it was still dark. Just less so. By 5.30am the sky was light, a lovely shade of orangey-pink.

But still no sun! I began to think the sun itself had ceased to exist! But gradually over the next long while, with the sky getting lighter and lighter, the sun very shyly poked it's head above the horizon.

Stunning, certainly. But a long, long, dreadfully drawn-out process.

That's how the sunrise usually happens of course. The equator is the exception.

Saul's conversion experience, which saw him shift from darkness to light with such rapidity, is generally the exception too.

The first big flaw in our thinking in 'instant' terms is our failing to see that mostly the 'sunrise' of faith in a person's life is not an 'equatorial' thing.

The second big flaw is our thinking like this has to do with our failure to see what was really going on in the life and the heart of this man.

It wasn't really all compressed into that moment on the famed Damascus Road. To think it was betrays a certain superficiality. There was, in other words, more than a bit of history behind that single moment when he came to faith.

This was a man who had studied the Scriptures for years. The Word of God is potent and it seeps beneath the skin of those who read it - even those resistant to its summons and its truth.

The Word of God, like some secret agent infiltrating far behind the enemies' lines - the Word of God had been doing its work in his life for years, in ways he was wholly unaware of. Weakening all his defences. Corroding all his intellectual arrogance. 'Getting under his skin' as we say, and whispering through to his conscience that all was far from right.

And then, as well, there was the impact of the testimony Stephen gave. Stephen was a man who loved the Lord Jesus, taught God's Word and challenged God's people, with a wisdom and a winsomeness which was hard to resist.

Their only answer was to get rid of the guy. Which they did by stoning the man to death.

Saul, we're told was watching.

Watching, without a doubt, a quite remarkable, humbling manner of dying on Stephen's part. A bit too reminiscent of the death of the Jesus he loved. His grace, his strength, his peace, his courage, his love. And his forgiving spirit.

A bit too much of the deja vu for any informed spectator.

The sight, I imagine, was imprinted for ever on the mind and heart of Saul. And the memory of this godly man must have lived with Saul all those years.

His conversion had a history. The fuse head been lit long before and had quietly burned all those years. The 'bang' when conversion took place was spectacular, dramatic, sudden. Sure.

But 'bangs' like that don't happen without such a fuse.

A lot of the time when I'm speaking with folk I'm part of that God-given fuse. Sometimes lighting the fuse. Sometimes seeing that fuse is kept burning in the knowledge the explosion will happen at some point further down the line.

A bit of my time today's been like that. Folk I've been seeing, and I know that the Lord is at work in their lives, and it's great to be seeing all that - but I'm longing and praying for more.

The fuse is burning. The sky in their hearts and their lives is brightening every week. But the sun of living faith in Jesus Christ has yet to rise.

Sunrise is rarely an instant thing.