82 - Spiritual Conversations - a

We know a lot more about God than our minds are able or willing to understand. We’ve all had experiences that we know took place, but we can’t explain. There have been moments in our lives when we recognized that someone was present with us, even if we didn’t know His name. There have been times when an unseen hand came out of nowhere to protect us, or a voice interrupted our thoughts with information we needed to hear. Since we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world, it shouldn’t surprise us when such things take place, but it usually does, because we live in a culture that has been trying to deny that anything spiritual exists, for the past 300 years. We’re repeatedly told that the universe arose out of nothing, that life is a meaningless accident, and that when we die our conscious minds cease to exist and our bodies decompose and return to the earth. And those voices are getting louder and more demanding. So people tend to hide their spiritual experiences, feeling confused or even embarrassed that they had them. They assume they must have imagined it, or what happened was merely a very unusual coincidence. Yet spiritual encounters can’t be explained away that easily, because deep down inside there’s a part of us that still remembers what happened.

Paul shared his testimony with Agrippa in an effort to help this man listen to his own heart. The king was an expert in religious tradition, but at the same time tragically enslaved to the passions of his flesh. The man desperately needed Jesus, but his rational mind was in the way, so Paul shared his own personal story to try to help him listen to his spirit. On this occasion Paul described everything Jesus said to him during that encounter on the road to Damascus. He disclosed things that aren’t recorded anywhere else, and he did so for a reason. He was trying to awaken Agrippa’s spirit to remember things he had already heard. If we listen carefully he’ll awaken ours as well.