Have you ever felt you were doing so good only to find out later we were so wrong? Often it’s because are hearts are not calibrated correctly as was the case with Saul of Tarsus before he was known as Paul the Apostle. “I am a Jew…educated…strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God…I persecuted the Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons.” (Acts 22:3-4) Saul was zealous for God and was so convinced he was serving God by persecuting Christians. He thought he was doing God a favor. Yet, what was wrong with being zealous? The problem with Saul is that his heart was misaligned. It was not zeroed to God’s heart; therefore everything he did was subsequently off as well.

“…and the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing God a service.” (Jn. 16:2 NLT)  That’s right. Our hearts can get that far off balance. We see that in the world today. People say, what’s wrong with doing this or that? They feel it’s no big deal to compromise a little. I mean what could be so bad if one is zealous for God? as we seen in Saul’s life, sometimes people’s hearts just need some tweaking so that what we are sensing is really in line with God’s heart because... “The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked.” (Jer. 17:9 NLT)

Some time ago Anna and I challenged each other to see who could lose the most weight. One day I got on the scale and saw that I’d lost six pounds. However, when I stepped off the scale, I realized that the dial was set to minus six pounds so I had actually gained weight. The setting was off so it gave a false reading. Just as bathroom scales need to be zeroed to give a correct reading, so too our hearts must be zeroed to God’s. Otherwise, what should bother us won’t and the only way we stop short of destruction is when things are festering to a point of throbbing pain.

As the story continues, Saul was on his way to Damascus when God dramatically intervened in his life by blinding him with a bright light and knocking him off his horse. For three days and nights he prayed and didn’t eat or drink. Meanwhile, God asks Ananias to go and pray for Saul because he would be used as a vessel for God. He was about to recalibrate Saul’s heart.

God may not be so spectacular in getting our attention, but from time to time He wants us to allow Him to recalibrate our hearts. How do we do that? It’s done in quiet times. We need to pray in such a way that transformation takes place. We connect to God when we allow God’s truths to enter in during prayer. How then do we begin to cooperate with God and allow Him to recalibrate our hearts to be in line with His?

1.     TAKE TIME TO PRAY.

Why do we need to take time to pray? It’s because our hearts are best attuned in times of quietness. If we don’t take time to pray, our inner compass just like the gauge of a scale will be so far off and we’ll be confused even when we are zealous for God. “And [Saul] was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank. And the Lord said to [Ananias], ‘Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying…” (Acts 9:9-11)

Now I don’t think Saul was praying meaningless, shallow prayers. I think he was re-evaluating his whole life and laying it out before the Lord and asking where he went wrong. So it is to be for us that like Saul we must take time to pray because…

• PRAYER IS THINKING DEEPLY IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD.

I want to encourage everyone to get away from time to time and come before God and ask Him how you’re doing. Ask Him how’s your attitude, how do you treat people? Are you encouraging enough or do you tear people down? Do you go beyond humor where you start to denigrate or demean under the guise of fun? Take the reality of your life and juxtapose it on God. It’s kind of like putting your life up to a light. How are you living, does it match His truths? There’s a balance we must ask Him to help us find that. If we don’t make time to spend before the Lord, we’ll have a tendency to drift and think what we are doing is just fine only to find out later we were so off the mark.

I remember a time when a friend of mine asked to borrow two thousand dollars. He promised he’d pay it back in a month and I said no problem. Well one month, two months, and one year came and went and he hadn’t paid back the loan. So I asked him about it and he thought I’d given it to him. I reminded him that he said he’d pay it back in a month. In essence, we misinterpreted what the other said. So we departed upset.

I remember praying to God and just being angry at the whole situation. And the first stage of prayer is sometimes like that. We’re grumbling or venting to God. Then after some time, I settled down and asked God, “What is Your attitude toward this situation? How’s my disposition, my language, my thinking?” The second stage of prayer is when we start correcting to God. That’s when transformation takes place. And as we stay in prayer and think deeply, we begin to change our fleshly thoughts to spiritual thoughts. “…we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.” (1 Cor. 2-13) In other words, it is in prayer that the Holy Spirit mentors us and teaches us spiritual thoughts combined with spiritual words which help us to correct to God’s best. So when we hear in prayer that one of our thoughts is wrong, we make that change right away. “…we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5 TEV) In essence, in prayer we make wrong thoughts obey Christ. And the result is: “…be renewed in the spirit of the mind.” (Eph. 4:23)

When we pray correctly, we emerge different because we start correcting and bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Thus, there is a recalibration in the way we think. And we come away with a renewed mind. So when there is a discrepancy or a check in our spirit, we readily correct ours to His which will result in a transformation. The greatest transformation happens when we take time to pray.

So the first thing to do to recalibrate our hearts is to pray deeply before the presence of God. The next thing is sometimes when we sense unsettledness on the inside even though we can’t put our finger on it, yet there is a lack of peace, God wants us to…

2.     RESPOND WELL TO SUFFERING.

God asked Ananias to go to Saul and pray for him. However, Ananias questioned God because he had heard that Saul persecuted Christians. Nevertheless, God tells him to go and pray for Saul because he was a chosen vessel and wanted to teach him how to suffer. What? Yes, that’s right and God will teach us the same thing. “But the Lord said… ‘I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.’” (Acts 9:15-16) You see, suffering is often the sign of something far deeper or something we’ve ignored. It’s like getting a little bur in our toenail. At first there’s discomfort and it’s just kind of irritating. Yet if we don’t do anything about it, it becomes infected and eventually throbbing pain. Yet had we taken care of that when it was only an irritant we would not have to suffer so much.

In the same way, God will teach us how to suffer well. When something is an irritant, we will take care of it right away before it becomes even more painful. When we sense a check in our spirit, we must heed that warning sign. Though suffering is a part of recalibrating life, we don’t have to wait until our pain is profound before we give attention to it. “But the Lord said… ‘I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.’” (Acts 9:15-16)

How can we sense when things are not right? Well, God gives us a conscience – when the peace is gone it bothers us. Our problem is we often slip back. How can we reduce the slippage?

• DON’T TOLERATE A LACK OF PEACE. 

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…” (Col. 3:15) The word rule is the word for umpire. So we actually let the peace of Christ be the umpire in our lives who says fair or foul. We must take care of things as soon as we sense a lack of peace before it festers and progresses to unbearable pain because that’s too late in our suffering. For Saul, it wasn’t painful enough until God had to knock him off his horse and blind him.

Don’t ignore times when you sense a lack of peace just because it’s not painful enough. God says we are His chosen vessel and He wants us to learn to suffer well so that when something is not right, we deal with it right way. And really God gives us only two options when we are suffering a little discomfort: either forgive or resolve, but don’t hold on to it.

God wanted Paul to have an insight into people’s lives, to be sensitive to things that were going wrong and deal with it right away. He would give Paul the divine mentoring of the Holy Spirit. The same is true for us. God wants to keep our hearts from having a wrong perspective or thinking we are zealous for God when really we are destroying people, being hard because of something we haven’t dealt with.

Therefore, He’s given us our conscience which is like a scale or a balance. When there is a lack of peace, it accuses us. And when there is a presence of His peace zeroed in. In fact, it’s a sign that we are one of God’s children when our conscience is working. “They demonstrate that God’s law is written within them, for their own consciences either accuse them or tell them they are doing what is right.” (Rom. 2:15 NLT)

“When He killed them, then they sought Him, and returned and searched diligently for God.” (Ps. 78:34) Some of the Israelites were killed or destroyed and then thought they’d better return to God.

But God doesn’t want us to wait until the pain is so great before we take care of something we should have taken care of early on. It’s too late when we see death happening. We need to be more insightful than that. However, we are unable to do it on our own. That’s why God told Ananias to lay hands on Saul to give him a sustaining power to be changed. Thus, God wants us to …

3.     BE FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Allow Him to fill you with the Holy Spirit that will give you sustaining power. “…after laying hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’” (Acts 9:17) In other words, God didn’t send Ananias to remove the consequences of his sin. He came to give Saul power to stay out of sin and make a permanent change. And that’s a prayer we should pray: “God, fill me with your Holy Spirit” and pray that often because that is what will give you the power to make permanent change. Otherwise, you may feel sorrowful or contrite because everything went wrong. But as soon as it is right, you’ll return back to your old ways.

. “…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price…” (1 Cor. 6:19-20) We have been bought with a price and are no longer our own. “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses…” (Acts 1:8) The word power is a Greek word dunamis where we get the word dynamite from. We will receive power or authority from the Holy Spirit. The word witness is a Greek word marturion. It’s where we get the word martyr. Essentially, when the Holy Spirit fills us, our old life dies and can never come back again and we get a brand new life. But that will only happen when we ask the Lord to come and fill us with the Holy Spirit. And until we make that commitment we will never know what it is to be filled with His Spirit. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

His name was Tim. He was a friend of mine living in Hilo and he had some major problems. He was deep into drugs and wanted to die. He tried unsuccessfully on three occasions to commit suicide. Each time I was called to hospital to counsel him. Finally on the last visit he said he just wanted to die. So I said than just do it and I’d help him. I said, just throw your life away but don’t throw it towards the devil, throw it to Jesus. Just give it away. You no longer have a life because it belongs to Jesus. Suddenly he finally understood and gave his life over to Jesus and the Holy Spirit took over. Today he is a missionary in Japan. For the first time, I began to understand what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit in such a way that you no longer own your life. The change becomes permanent.

When you feel you are against the wall and don’t know which way to turn, take time to pray and think deeply before the Lord. And if there is a discrepancy in your life that doesn’t match God’s, correct back to Him right away. When we have a heart after His, we will want what He wants, delight in what He delights in; desire the things that He desires. Then we’ll have an upright heart. So we need to be sensitive when there is an absence of peace in our lives and we must know how to suffer well. We have to deal with situations or issues long before it begins to throb. Then we’ll know our heart is beginning to be recalibrated. Then we can pause and ask the Lord to fill us afresh with the Holy Spirit to give us the power to sustain change.

Discussion Questions

1. Have you ever felt like Saul – so zealous for God only to find out later you were so far off the mark?
2. Take time to lay your life out before the Lord. Ask Him to examine your life – see if what you perceive is the same as God. If not, correct those things He reveals right away.
3. When you sense a check in your spirit that something is not right, what do you do? How has your response helped or hindered? Would you do things differently in the future after what you have learned today?
4. How do you feel about Paul says in 1 Cor. 6 “that you are not your own”?
5. How will you apply at least one principle you learned today in your life this week?