The Selected One by Rodney Howard Browne
If you have not yet done so, stand for a couple of seconds in Ananias’s sandals.
Know how hard it would’ve been to discover how God’s plan could doubtless work.
How in the world could God take a man renowned for such vicious, merciless, and murderous treatment of trusting Christians and turn him into an envoy for Christ? Maybe Ananias did not hear the answer in the Lord’s Word to him : “But the Lord announced to him, ‘Go, for he’s a selected instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the boys of Israel ; for I’m going to show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake’ “( Acts 9:15–16 ). God’s answer to Ananias’s question is clear : “I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.”. Down thru the centuries it’s been God’s taming ground for raging bulls. The melting pot of agony and trouble is God’s schoolroom where Christians learn mildness, compassion, personality, patience, and grace.
It is true for you and for me, and it might shortly be true for Saul. Years after, with scars to prove it and under the pile of heavy ministry responsibilities, he gave affidavit that suffering had been his companion. I do not understand all of the reasons we suffer for the Name. But I am convinced of this : it is an element of God’s sovereign plan to prepare us to be His instruments of grace to a cruel and desperate world.
On his body would be the iconic stripes of his suffering—imprisonment, harsh thrashings, stonings, shipwreck, near-drowning, ambushes, thefts, sleeplessness, starvation, solitude, illness, dehydration, intense hypothermia.
Beyond all that, he faced the nerve-wrangling, inevitable responsibilities of church leadership. Each distressing, nasty trial brought him to his knees, turning him into a deeper man of grace, modestly committed to following his Savior’s lead. What have you suffered for the name of Christ?
