There
are three men with the name Ananias in the New Testament but the one in this
story is the one who lived in Damascus.
He
was a man who obeyed God in circumstances which made it very difficult to do so.
He wasn’t well known except in his own locality, where it was said of
him, that “He was a devout man, an observer of the law and well spoken of
by all the Jews that lived there” (Acts
22:12-13).
He
was described as a disciple, in Acts 9:10-19, who had seen a vision in which the
Lord spoke to him. Today
we might say that he saw a picture.
Words accompanied the vision and what he heard must have shaken him to
the core. He was told to go
to the house of Judas, in Straight Street, Damascus and ask for a man called
Saul who came from Tarsus. Furthermore
he was told to go and lay his hands on Saul so that he might recover his sight.
This
in itself was a task requiring faith, because Ananias, like the rest of us,
couldn’t make blind men see unless God himself really gave the empowering.
But not only this, Ananias knew that Saul had come to Damascus “breathing
threats and murder”
against the Jews who had become disciples of Jesus.
He expressed these feelings to the Lord and was given reassuring words.
Ananias
went because he believed the words that Jesus had given him, and he did what he
was asked to do. As
he obeyed, Saul received his sight and Ananias prayed for him to be filled with
the Holy Spirit. Saul
was baptised, thus sealing his intention to be a disciple of Jesus – a
complete turn around.
So
through his belief in, and obedience to the word of the Lord to him, Ananias
became a major instrument in transforming Saul the persecutor of Christian
believers into Paul the great Apostle to the Gentiles.
As
has been said, Ananias believed and trusted in the Lord to perform the great
work when he went to the persecutor of the disciples and prayed for him.
We infer from this that before he received the vision, Ananias must have
been a person who really loved the Lord and had opened himself to receive
whatever the Lord wanted to give. But
more than this, turning it around, the Lord believed in Ananias!
This
is evidenced by the words of Jesus before the event – Saul has seen a man
named Ananias laying hands on him to receive his sight.
So
the whole thing came together, Saul was blessed and I’m sure that Ananias was
blessed too by what the Lord had chosen to do through him.
God could have done all this without Ananias but He chose to do it
through him, and (dare I say it?) maybe Jesus was blessed too by the whole
episode.
Can
He believe in us also?