The un-lovely.

The story of God is filled with unlovely people and God is big on loving the unlovely. My favorite story of an unlovely person is the story of Paul. Now Paul didn’t start off as “Paul, the great man of God” no Paul started out as Saul. Saul was the one of the unloveliest people around in the early days of the church. The story starts with Stephen. In Acts 7 Stephen is giving a defense to a group of people that “where unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking”.1 Question after question Stephen answered with even more grace and more control. I can imagine these moments full of tension and expectancy and in the back of the room was a young man named Saul. Now Saul was probably a handsome man, a young man up on the rise in the community. I know none of this describes a person that we would consider to be unlovable, but what we see as lovable isn’t always lovely. So Stephen is at this point preaching to his persecutors and with every word that comes from his mouth their anger grows until the point were they were “gnashing” their teeth. Now gnashing teeth is like grinding your teeth but to an extreme. Stephen remained calm and full of the spirit. Now it gets so intense that Stephen is driven out of town and they began to stone Him. All this time Saul followed, As Stephen was being Stoned Saul was holding the robes of the stoners. I can imagine Saul’s grimace at Stephen as he passionately cried out to God, but what thoughts must have coursed through his mind as Stephen said “Lord, Jesus receive my spirit”2. I think it was something like a mixture of satisfaction in Stephens’s death and fear and confusion that this man was willing to die for what he believed. As Stephen Lie lifeless on the ground I think that Saul stood there and questioned himself a little.
I was talking to Collin the other day while we were running at the park and I said, “Do you know why people give up on exercise so quickly, because the results are not immediate.” The results aren’t immediately visible but there are results. When people exercise most of us want to lose that little bit of weight we think we have, that little bit of fat that seems to always be there. We all give up pretty quickly, but do you know where the change takes place first? The change takes place first around the heart. The heart has a layer of fat around it to cushion it from damage. So when we start exercising we loose dangerous fat around our heart before we loose weight anywhere else. The change is an internal job before the external gets involved.
So here is Saul sometime later is on the road to Damascus. Saul by this time had become one of the leaders in the persecution movement of the early church. He was on the move after the disciples with every thing he had. Pretty unlovely at this point wouldn’t you say. Then the most amazing thing happens the unlovely becomes lovely. Saul underwent a change on the road to Damascus. He encountered the one, which he sought to persecute.

Acts 9 (New International Version)

Saul's Conversion
1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
5"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. 6"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
7The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
10In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!" "Yes, Lord," he answered.
11The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."
13"Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."
15But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."
17Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." 18Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

So Saul had an interaction that changed him. He went from Saul the persecutor to Paul the servant in a matter of moments. For most of us the conversion isn’t so drastic it’s more of a process. Paul was an amazing character. He wrote the vast majority of the New Testament and endured so many hardships due to his beliefs that if most of us were in his shoes we would have probably bailed. The point to this is that God took the unloveliest and made him lovely.
I can remember (looking back) before I became a true Christian that I was pretty rough around the edges and I can remember sitting in church Sunday to Sunday and seeing people walk in that looked like they had been out in the woods for weeks. They smelled bad and I didn’t want anything to do with them. I thought I was Lovely and had it all together. But I remember the day that I gave in to the feeling in my heart and the sudden realization that followed of how just un-lovely I truly was. The point I am getting at here is that God can make the most wretched thing into the most beautiful thing. He did it with Paul. He used Paul to speak the good news to the gentiles. (Gentiles being you and I) Just imagine what he can do with us. There is a trap we can fall into when God starts using us to accomplish his will.
The trap that so many of us fall into is the “me trap”. The “me trap” occurs when we start to think and act like it is all about us. Lets talk about the loveliest people that God ever made, Adam and Eve. They were the first man and woman created, and what were they created for? They were created to reflect Gods glorious image. So you can image that they were pretty darn near perfect, lovely in every way. They had it made; they got to be with God on a physical basis, they were the first to see all of his creation. They were caretakers of his splendid creation, and were like know other creation around; they were made in the image of the creator. Adam and Eve reflected Gods image. Can you imagine, all is going well one day until eve falls into the “me trap”

Genesis 3:1-6 (New International Version)

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

The thing that always troubled me was that Adam and Eve took the fruit. Why? I use to think to myself while my Sunday school teacher told the story. You guys had it made and blew it for the rest of us. It wasn’t till recently that it clicked. The “me trap”. If you will notice Adam and Eve didn’t just suddenly stop believing in God, they just basically said, “wow you are awesome, but I think I am too”. Here you have Gods prize creation that was designed to reflect the light of his glory, trying to be there own source of glory. The creation wanted to be like the creator. A reflecting surface can’t do anything unless the light is already present. The mirror was trying to be the light, but the only thing a mirror can reflect without external light is darkness…
Two of the world’s first people, the loveliest creation around suddenly became the unlovely people around. So what does God do about this? He doesn’t write them off like so many of us would, were we in his position. He loves them and says I will use these now unlovely creations to proclaim my glory. I will use what the serpent intended for evil for good, because I alone AM.