Acts 26: Conversations That Change Lives

Introduction

Two months before this message, Stephen Foster received a voice note from a friend, 7 minutes and 26 seconds long. In it, the friend read Acts 26 and told him: "I believe this is a key passage for you, Stephen, and for our church." Since then, the pastor of St Aldates in Oxford has been praying over this text. Today he opens it as part of the Vision 26 series, which looks at the cultural moment we are living in and at how the Church can respond to the need of the hour.

The chapter shows Paul as a prisoner, in chains, before the governor Festus and King Agrippa. His life is at risk, and yet he turns his defense into the story of his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. For Stephen Foster, this passage speaks about the ordinary conversations you have at the office, at school, at the school gate. Some of them can change lives.

Message outline

1. Make the most of the present moment

• Paul is in chains, under threat of death. He is given the floor to defend himself, but he does not first try to defend himself. He sees his captivity as an opportunity to talk about Jesus, and he tells the story of his encounter with him.
• On the road to Damascus, Jesus says: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" and then "I am Jesus, whom you persecute." Paul was persecuting the Church, and Jesus says it is himself he is persecuting: he does not separate himself from his Church.
• A generation used to say: "I like Jesus, but not the Church." Stephen Foster observes that this is changing. There is no perfect church, and churches make mistakes, but "it is almost impossible to follow Jesus if you do not care about his Church."
• He cites a book by Dr Trueman: there is an effort to remove the sacred from public life, even as people are becoming open again to the sacred, to the Church and to holy places.

2. Kicking against the goads

• "It is hard for you to kick against the goads." Jesus knows Paul better than Paul knows himself, and he puts words to what is happening inside him.
• The goad was a long pointed stick the shepherd used to bring back animals that strayed. Left to themselves, they can fall off a cliff or get caught in a thicket. Resisting God's direction and living contrary to what he teaches hurts. This is true of a person, a policy, a nation and the whole world.
• "My generation was told: if you get rid of enough faith, you will be happy. That turned out to be false." In his view, secular thinking is going through a crisis of faith, and many are looking for a faith, a hope, a savior.
• He mentions the book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, about a company that became almost a trillion-dollar business: at the center, there is nothing. A few people in a room in San Francisco, a single question (how to grow faster), and decisions made without any spiritual foundation, followed by enormous legal settlements, because it is now accepted that these products risk harming children.
• On artificial intelligence, a friend from church, a professor who studies the subject, told him that it has no emotions: it can only pretend to care about you. Do you want to put your life in the hands of something that can only pretend to understand what it means to be human?

3. A generation asking why nothing works

• Stephen Foster uses the image of an iPhone that someone keeps dunking in water, against its intended use: it works badly, you put it in rice, you pray, and in the end you tell yourself it may have been designed to be used differently. Whole groups have removed God and faith from their lives and are asking: "Why doesn't it work?"
• A new interest is appearing: maybe I should try prayer, try faith. On social media, people say they are trying to live out Christianity for a while to see if it works, and they find that they are happier, sleep better and are less anxious. It is the way of living they were created for.
• Around you, at work, at school, at university, in boardrooms, people are asking this question. You have the opportunity to show them a better way. Do not waste this moment.

4. Sent and established where you are

• Jesus says to Paul: "Arise, and stand on your feet. For I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you a servant and a witness." Paul had tried to wipe the Church off the earth. He was probably a little less qualified than you are.
• Being sent is not random, even on a Monday afternoon in front of your emails, when you wonder why you are in this office. You have been strategically placed in your school, your hospital, your relationships, your job, not just to be one more person there, but to be an ambassador of Jesus there.
• What matters is that Jesus sends you, more than your CV, your skills or your eloquence. You are a witness of what you have seen of him and of what you will still see.
• As a young lawyer, around 26 or 27, Stephen Foster found it very hard to talk about his faith with his colleagues. He attended a weekend training on the subject, where he was asked to pray for his workplace. On Monday he arrives at the office very early, coffee in hand, before a meeting with one of the most respected female lawyers in the country. A colleague asks him how his weekend went. He thinks: "Not today." He ends up saying that he attended a training on how to talk about your faith. The colleague then asks him what heaven will be like, whether he will have a body, whether he will recognize his wife. The week before, he had had dinner with a man he thought was a Christian, and these questions would not leave him alone. They talk for half an hour, and Stephen Foster arrives ten minutes late to his meeting.

5. Jesus is already at work

• Jesus is not passive in this moment. He is present in your workplaces, your friendships, your city. He came to seek and to save the lost, and he has lost none of his power, his passion or his energy.
• Sometimes you feel a prompting to talk about your faith or to encourage a colleague, and then you put it down to chance. What if that person had prayed at two in the morning: "God, I can't do this, can you send someone?" What if they had started reading the Bible without understanding it?
• Jesus sends Paul so that people may receive "forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified". According to a therapy specialist Stephen Foster met, many people lose even the basics of forgiveness: we become experts at diagnosing our parents' faults, and then we have children ourselves. How can you open a conversation that leads to forgiveness?
• Loneliness is an emergency in our culture, even when people show off a life without friends and a perfectly arranged evening. Jesus has a place for you at the table, among those he has sanctified: eternal security.
• For more than 500 years, a great deal of blood and ink has been spilled over how we are saved. Stephen Foster would have liked people to meditate more on what Jesus says here: forgiveness and salvation come through faith in him. But Paul adds that they must "repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance." Faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.
• You are never finished with the Gospel. The more you understand who Jesus is and what he did on the cross, the more your relationships, your work, your emails and your conversations change.

6. Speaking freely

• "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." Because he obeys God, Paul is free to take risks.
• Festus exclaims: "Paul, you are crazy! Your great learning is driving you insane!" Paul feels neither frightened nor insulted. He replies that these are words of truth and reasonableness.
• Agrippa says to him: "With a little persuasion, you would make me a Christian!" Paul replies that he prays that not only the king, but all who are listening, would become such as he is, "except for these bonds".
• Paul steps back: he is not speaking to only two people. Servants, soldiers, guards, all hear the conversation. Who is listening to yours, in the open-plan office, in the meeting room, at the school gate?
• Something is happening in the Church and in the city: people are becoming Christians, sometimes suddenly, sometimes gradually. Stephen Foster's prayer is that everyone will meet Jesus, and he recalls Paul's prayer in Ephesians 6:19: to make known boldly, every time he opens his mouth, the mystery of the Gospel, for which he is an ambassador in chains.

Key takeaways

• Jesus does not separate himself from his Church: to follow him is to care about it.
• Resisting God's direction hurts, both people and societies. Many are finding that life without God does not work.
• You are sent and placed where you live. Jesus' sending matters more than your skills.
• Jesus is already at work around you, and some people may be waiting for someone to talk to them.
• Obedience to God makes you free to speak, even at the risk of looking crazy.

Personal application

1. In what area of your life are you kicking against the goads, resisting what God is showing you?
2. Where has Jesus placed you this year, and what changes when you see yourself as his ambassador there?
3. What have you seen of Jesus that you could simply tell, like Paul before Agrippa?
4. When did you recently feel a prompting to encourage someone or to talk about your faith, and what did you do with it?
5. Who is listening to your conversations, and for which workplace, school or friendship can you pray this week?

Verses cited

• Acts 26:12-29
• Acts 9:4-5
• Luke 19:10
• 2 Corinthians 5:20
• Ephesians 6:19

Frequently asked questions

What does "kicking against the goads" mean in Acts 26:14?

The goad was a long pointed stick the shepherd used to bring back animals that strayed from the path. For Stephen Foster, Jesus shows Paul that he is hurting himself by resisting his direction. This is true of a person as much as of a culture: living contrary to the way God created us ends up wounding us.

Why does Stephen Foster speak of a moment to seize in order to talk about Jesus?

In his view, a generation believed that by getting rid of faith it would be happier, and that turned out to be false. Many are now asking why their lives do not work, and are open again to prayer and to the sacred. Christians therefore have the opportunity to show a better way, and he urges them not to waste it.

How do you talk about your faith at work according to Acts 26?

Paul simply tells what he has seen of Jesus. Stephen Foster reminds us that you are sent and placed where you work, that Jesus is already at work around you, and that his sending matters more than your ease. His own story shows that a prayer for your workplace can open opportunities; he urges you to pay attention to them and to speak freely, without fear of ridicule.