This homily was preached on 25th January 2021 at St Oswald’s Church, Durham, at 6pm zoom service on the eve of the conversion of St Paul.

Let us pray. This evening we remember the conversion of Paul, how God met him when he was Saul on the road to Damascus. As we together uncover your holy scriptures, may we encounter you Lord. Amen.

This evening I want us to focus on testimonies. Our New Testament reading came from Acts 22:3-16, and it is speech given by Paul as he is defending himself after he has been arrested for preaching in the temple in Jerusalem. Standing on the steps of the Roman barracks, he begins to speak to the crowd and shares his story, his testimony of his own life, from his birth right through to his conversion and where he is now a witness to Jesus. 

What I want you to hear from this is that all that Paul is doing here is telling his life story. Nothing else. Nothing fancy. He is just sharing his story, and I want to suggest to you this is the most powerful way in which we witness to Jesus and fulfil our call and great commission as followers of Jesus to go out to all the world to make disciples. 

Testimonies are powerful, really powerful. We use them all the time as essentials means of communicating information. We all know how important testimonies and witness statements are for cases in court, as we see on every midweek BBC drama. We also use references in the world of work, testifying about who the person taking up the job is like. And at a less serious note, we use stories of other people’s experiences to help choose where you want to go out for dinner on a Friday night, or in lockdown, where you are going to order from. All of these are forms of testimonies, and they are incredibly impactful.

Testimonies, simply sharing your story and experience, is really powerful. 

So, Paul shares his testimony of his life. The high point of his story is his conversion on the road to Damascus. Whilst travelling to Damascus in order to persecute Christians, Paul, was met by a great light, and he heard the voice of Jesus speaking to him. And having encountered Jesus, Paul completely switched his life around. He was now no longer the biggest persecutor of Christians, but he was now a Christian himself and was the biggest testifier of Jesus. 

We see in the conversion of Paul that to know God, to see and hear him, leads us to a response of being a witness and testifying to what you have seen and heard. After Paul sees Jesus revealed to him in the light, he asks, ‘What am I to do, Lord?’ Paul knew that his encounter with Jesus had to bring about a different response, and a different course of action as a result of seeing the Lord Jesus. Paul himself was blinded having seen Jesus, he was changed as a person – the great overwhelming glory of Jesus impacted Paul both physically and also spiritually. 

I want you to think about your journey of faith. I don’t know where each of you are at. Some might have been Christians for a long time, and for some it may be the first time you have heard about Jesus. Some of you might feel God really closely in your lives, and some of you might be struggling to feel God in your lives at the moment. Whatever it is, think about your own life story, your testimony of God present in your life. And as you think about the times you felt God or encountered him, we need to ask the same question as Paul, “What am I to do, Lord? What am I to do?”

We see in verses 14-15 that Ananias decrees that, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you [Paul] to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear his own voice; for you will be a witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard.’ I believe that God wants to extend this verse to all of us. By this I do not mean that we are all to be St Paul, but that like St Paul, our own encounters with Jesus bring a call upon our lives as Christians to share the stories about these encounters with Jesus. 

What am I to do, Lord? What are we to do, Lord? I believe that God is calling us in this passage from Acts to join in with Paul and share our stories and testimonies of seeing and hearing God in our lives. This is the call on our lives as Christians. We are to tell others about the good news of Jesus, and we can do so most simply by sharing our own stories of God in our lives. 

Before we go, I want to suggest two points of encouragement from this passage to help us as we share our testimonies. 

Firstly, we are to share our simple everyday stories of God. One of the biggest traps that we fall into is thinking that we need to be really experienced preachers and teachers like Paul, or our very own Peter, in order to talk about Jesus with others. But God invites as to come as we are to share our stories. 

The first thing that Paul does in Acts 22:3 is affirm that he is a Jew. In doing so, he is saying to everyone that he is not an outsider but one of the people, a Jew like everyone else. I think this is important for us to remember when we share our testimony and the good news of Jesus. We here are the people of Durham, people who live, work, and at the moment locked down in the city of Durham. 

It is regular like-minded people who are called to share their stories of Jesus to one another. We do not need to be theological heavyweights like Paul. We are called as everyday people to share everyday stories of God in our lives. 

Secondly, we are not always starting from scratch when we share our stories. 

Our friends and families already know us and know our stories. Sharing our stories can sometimes be connecting the dots for the people around us. 

Along the road to Damascus, Paul’s companions also saw the great light, but they did not see or hear Jesus. ‘They saw the light but did not see it as a revelation of Jesus in glory.’^[1]

There are times when the people around us and closest to us, see the light, but are yet to see that it is the light of God. Paul would have been a connection point to his companions, being able to describe his encounter with the Lord Jesus and talk to them about all that it meant for his life, and for those who also come to know the Lord Jesus. 

We are called to be God’s light to the world, and the people around us probably see the light that shines from our lives. Our love for one another; the way we give generously to those in need; the way we readily forgive those who trespass against us. Our friends and family probably already recognise these qualities in us, they just don’t yet know that this is because you have Jesus in your life. We can help people know that the light that shines from our lives is the light of Jesus, and in turn they experience their own encounter of Jesus, their own story and testimony of God in their lives. 

As I come to the end, I want to pray for us. Dear Lord, thank you for the ways in which you met with each of us in our own lives, in the highs and lows, and the everyday. Equip and empower us to share our stories and testimonies of how we have encountered you in our lives, so that we may be your light in this world, and like your servant Paul, we too may bring people to come and know the glory of Jesus our Lord. Amen. 

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^[1] I. Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1980), 355.