Status Updates From Paul: A Biography

We easily forget that the author of these letters spent most of his waking hours with his sleeves rolled up, doing hard physical work in a hot climate, and that perhaps two-thirds of the conversations he had with people about Jesus and the gospel were conducted not in a place of worship or study, not even in a private home, but in a small, cramped workshop.

When people in churches today discuss Paul and his letters, they often think only of the man of ideas who dealt with lofty and difficult concepts, implying a world of librar-ies, seminar rooms, or at least the minister's study for quiet sermon preparation.

The story and acts doesn’t say that saw spoken, tongue or prophecy. The idea that things like that had to happen for the spirits gift to be genuine as a much later fiction. What acts offers instead is the remarkable statement that saw went at once to the synagogue and Damascus, and announced that Jesus was the son of God.

Ananias is visit to straight street is that Saul was promised the gift to the spirit, and everything in his subsequent life, and writings indicates that he believes this and had happened then and there.

As so often – – he becomes a reoccurring theme in Christian life – – when something has to be done, it will be done through an obedient, but quiet, likely, nervous, and worried, disciple.

Hope, in this sense is not a feeling. It is a virtual. You have to practice it.
You practice the virtue of Hope, through worship and prayer, through invoking the one God, through reading, and imagining the scriptural story, and through consciously, holding the unknown future within the unshakable, divine promises.

History is not just about events, but about motivations.

Gamaliel (Paul’s Rabbi), at least portrayed in Acts, advocated the policy of “live & let live.” If people wanted to follow this man Jesus, they could do so. If this new movement was from God, it would prosper; if not, it would fall by its own weight.