Wrecked

A couple weeks ago I was on my way home and turning into my apartment complex when suddenly my car was rocked as another vehicle crashed into my right taillight (pictured).  Whatever I thought I was doing when I got home was disregarded as I had to then sort out stuff with the police, insurance, and figure out how I was getting to work the next day.  Beyond that was the matter of getting my car repaired and securing another vehicle to drive while mine was in the shop.  Needless to say, this is rather inconvenient.

But what if I were to suggest that getting in a wreck could be a good thing?  Crazy, right?  Not as much as you may think...

Saul, filled with Pharisaical zeal, is on his way to Damascus to round up these crazy heretics proclaiming something about a man who claims to be God being raised from the dead.  Such blasphemy and heresy should not be among the people of Israel and Saul is going to do something about it.  But there, on that road to Damascus, Saul meets Jesus and it wrecks his life.  Not like a minor inconvenience.  Not, "keep dinner warm in the oven, we're going to be late."  Not "well that wasn't quite according to plan."

Saul's life as he knows it is WRECKED.  Turned upside down, inside out, around and through.  When the encounter with Jesus is over Saul can't even see.  But yet he sees things more clearly than he had ever before in his life.  Two things are certain to him: Jesus is Lord and his life will never be the same.  He doesn't even keep his own name but instead goes by Paul after this.

And so instead of living out his days as a Pharisee and a teacher of the Law, Paul ends up spending the rest of his life learning every bit of what Jesus meant when he said he would "show him how much he would suffer for the sake of my (Jesus') name."  And suffer he would.  "Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.  Three times I was beaten by rods.  Once I was stoned.  Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure."

But yet this same man who endured all that also encouraged others to "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice," and observed that "this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."  Would Paul say that it was a good thing, no, the greatest thing that ever happened to him to be wrecked by Jesus?  ABSOLUTELY!

So what about us?  We're really no different in a lot of ways.  We all have areas of sin in our life that keep us from living the life God intends for us.  We even do things that we think are for God but really we're not on the right road.  We need an encounter with Jesus that will wreck us.  Wreck our pride.  Wreck our strongholds of sin.  Wreck our attitudes.  Wreck our views of the world.  Wreck the way we look at our neighbors or the homeless guy on the street corner.  Wreck our view of the child in a country far away.  Wreck how we approach our families.  Wreck how we conduct ourselves at work.  Wreck how we conduct ourselves when no one is looking.  Wreck how we carry ourselves when everyone is looking.  Wreck every part of us that is not His.

When Jesus wrecks he doesn't come in to tidy up, he comes in to clean house.  It isn't easy, it isn't painless, it isn't done in a day.  It certainly isn't fun.  Paul probably would suggest that "fun" just wasn't a word common in his day-to-day life.  But "joy" on the other hand...He understood that unlike my car, which they will work to restore back to the way it was, Jesus wrecks and then rebuilds to reflect his image, that we may have life and have it abundantly.  So who says being wrecked is a bad thing?