Learning from Paul’s detours

The apostle Paul’s first detour lasted about three years. After his conversion, Paul, who was still known as Saul, was ready to start preaching and telling the world that Jesus, whom he had opposed, was indeed the Son of God. But nobody trusted him. There was even a plot on his life that he narrowly averted. He headed for the desert and stayed there for three years.

After that he met with James and the brothers in Jerusalem for two weeks. Nothing, however, seemed to come together so he returned to his native Tarsus in the Zagros Mountains and made tents for the next ten years.

Finally Barnabas sought Saul and said, “Brother Saul, God has need of you.” He could have responded, “I’ve been ready to go for thirteen years,” but he didn’t. The path was now becoming more apparent. After a period of fasting and prayer, the elders of the church in Antioch sent Barnabas and Saul on their first missionary journey.

The apostle Paul soon learned that the path contained many more detours – imprisonments, rejection, persecution, a thorn in the flesh, shipwreck and affliction. Lesser men would have quit, but he did not.

He knew that God was fully in control and that the detours were the unexpected turns and stops that God had designed in his life. The moment that you also understand that the detour is the path, you acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is the One directing traffic.