A Word in Season: A Disciple’s Disposition (Acts 9:6)

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What question really gives us an insight into the heart of a true follower of Jesus Christ?

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What question shows us a disciple's disposition? Among the candidates would be the question that Saul of Tarsus asked after he met the risen

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Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus. You may well know that he set out for Damascus, breathing threats and murder against the disciples of Jesus Christ.

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Saul had made it his life's business to bring them down, and in doing so to really wipe the name of Jesus of Nazareth off the face of the earth.

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But as he travelled, he saw this bright light shining around him from heaven, and he fell to the ground and he heard a voice saying,

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Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It was the

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Lord Jesus Christ speaking of himself as he was in the people that he had saved.

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The union between him and his saints was such that to attack them was to attack him.

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And so Saul cried out, Who are you, Lord? And the Lord said,

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I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.

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Saul was pushing back against the pointed sticks that would have prodded him in a certain direction, whether that was the testimony of a

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Stephen or the words that he would have heard from some of the people that he was attacking and assaulting and imprisoning, we're not sure.

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But Saul is now confronted by Jesus of Nazareth in his glory.

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The man that he wanted to destroy is the Lord he thought he was serving.

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The one that he had despised as a blasphemer is indeed God in the flesh.

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Now I don't think any of us can really cut to the very heart of what it must have meant for Saul of Tarsus to reach this conclusion and to see this reality.

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In that moment, everything that he had assumed, esteemed, treasured and pursued was utterly undone.

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To say that his world turned upside down is an understatement of gross proportion.

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This man is undone. This man comes to the end of himself. All the righteousness that he thought he had, all the worthiness of favour that he thought he'd cultivated before God, crumbles to dust and less than dust in a moment.

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He knows now that Jesus of Nazareth is Messiah, God's Lord, God's Christ.

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And in that recognition, he asks the question that reveals a disciple's disposition.

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Lord, what do you want me to do? In that moment, all

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Paul's schemes and dreams come to nothing. All his sense of his own reputation, nothing.

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All his appreciation for what he thought he could attain by persecuting the people of Jesus, nothing.

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All his background and all his learning, nothing in comparison to this.

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Now he knows the truth and the fact that perhaps he is not at this very moment swept from the face of the earth as a hell -deserving sinner impresses itself upon his soul.

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He has been a rebel. He has been an enmity with God in his greatest and purest and highest revelation of himself.

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And utterly undone, he simply says, Lord, what do you want me to do?

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No delays, no exceptions, no holding back, no question of what that might involve, no qualifications about what might lie ahead.

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Simply this. If you are God in the flesh, if you are Messiah, and if I am the man who now seeing your glory realizes my sin and understands that I am yours and that you may command me in whatever way you wish, all

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I need to know is this. What do you, O Christ, want me to do now and next?

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And that's the question that if we're true disciples, we ought to be asking. Perhaps not in the same context or even necessarily with the same sense of weight that Saul of Tarsus had on that occasion, but with the very same heart, with the very same spirit, and with the very same intent.

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Without qualification or reservation, Lord, what do you want me to do?