Notes from Wednesday 2/9

Tracing Paul’s faith journey

Paul’s story from a ‘third’ person perspective=Acts

•          Acts 8:14
•          Acts 9:1-6, 19b – 21
•          Acts 22:1-16
•          Acts 26:9 -23

Paul’s story from a first person perspective=undisputed epistles

•          1 Corinthians 1:18 – 29
•          Galatians 1:11-24
•          Philippians 3:4-16
•          Romans 7:15-25 (period of discouragement)
•          Romans 8:31-39

Major Events in Paul’s faith journey

•        Started out as Saul the persecutor of the church who hated Christians
•          Then he had an encounter with Jesus
•          Jesus transformed him, changed his mind (brought him to his knees)
•         Then he got really excited for Jesus “I LOVE JESUS”
•          He goes to work for the church (faces some opposition from church insiders)
•        Spends his life in service to God and for body of Christ

Major Themes

•          Either way, Paul was overzealous – he definitely went to extremes to persecute and extremes to proselytize (bring in new Christians)
•          A lot of people have a life changing experience with Jesus and then get really excited (camps, conferences, times of trial, etc)
•          God is for me
•         God picks the lowest, unlikely, unexpected
•         I try to do good, but can’t – fail at following God
•         Times of questioning
•          Everything is not easy
•          God is for us

Where does Paul’s story connect with your own life of faith? 
Where is your journey different?  
Is there one brief story you could tell that would articulate one of the stops in your faith journey (like Paul did)?

Bring those thoughts on Wednesday 2/16– we will be using that to write our own Psalm.