From: "Thomas F. Fischer" <>
To: <>
Subject: MH 91 We All Go To Damascus: Your Mid-Ministry Transformation
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 13:02:52 -0400

Greetings in Our Lord!

Later this week watch for "44 Things I Learned From Lyle Schaller." You'll
enjoy this exclusive compilation of some of his best insights for your
ministry.

Have you ever notice that virtually all the writers of Scripture were over
40? Perhaps it was because God realized that the mid-ministry transformation
would deepen and prepare their faith for this special calling. Today's
article may show how God may transform your ministry in a remarkable way
during the middle of your ministry to prepare you for the "better half".
Yes, as the article title suggests, "We All Go To Damascus."

BTW, Please send your response to "What I enjoy most about ministry" for a
proposed upcoming article! Thanks!

Blessings to all of you in God's service!__/__
                                          /
                                         /
Tom

A Look At Saul

Saul, born of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day,
a Pharisee of Pharisees, had a zeal for his faith virtually
unprecedented. While on the way to Damascus he had one main goal: To
carry out what he felt was his life’s calling, namely, to promote and
protect the faith of his fathers by means of destroying those Christians
who opposed Judaism.

Make no mistake. For Saul, the planned persecution of Damascus
Christians was not just a random act of zealotry. Instead, it was a
continuation of Paul’s obsessive desire to escalate the assault on
Christianity to the point of extinction. He had participated in other
anti Christian crusades before. Saul had come a long way since those
days when he was simply a passive observer and supporter of Christian
extermination.

Saul’s Passionate Mission

Beginning from his assent and support of Stephen’s stoning in Acts
8, Saul seemed bent on vigorously realizing the desire which shaped and
directed his entire life: to have widespread recognition as the most
recognized and acclaimed leader of Judaism. Nothing was going to stop
Saul. He was driven to success, achievement, and recognition.

Saul’s mission in Damascus, it appears, would bring him even greater
recognition among the Jewish Community. If successful, he could
virtually establish himself as the greatest Jewish leader of the
Mediterranean World in his time. For Saul, this trip to Damascus may
have been the crowning achievement of all his personal ambition to date.

The Damascus Crisis

We know the rest of the story. Saul, who thought he was following
God’s calling, unexpectedly confronted Jesus Christ in his Shekinah
glory. Rendered powerless through heaven-sent blindness, his crisis was
the beginning of a new birth, a new calling, a new and deeper
realization of God’s calling for him.

For the next 14 years in Arabia, this driven, self-made and
independent man of extraordinary accomplishment, ambition and drive,
would contemplate the implications of his new calling. He would spend
tireless energy in his search for what would give him real meaning and
lasting satisfaction in his life before God. The road to Damascus did
not change his faith. It changed the nature of his spirituality to the
deepest parts of his soul.

Saul Before The Calling

Saul was, in retrospect, a prime candidate for this change of life,
this total, full-scale spiritual transformation. Note what things
characterized Saul’s life immediately before the call.

1) Saul was extraordinary successful. Saul was experiencing the
greatest success he could ever possibly imagine. he was on his way
up…and no one could stop him. He had power to persuade, to outwit, and
knowledge to out shine any Jewish scholar in his day. He also enjoyed
the unrivaled support of the elite in Jerusalem who entrusted and
assigned to him numerous resources for him to use at his disposal.

2) In His mind, Saul was in absolute total control of his life, his
world, his environment, and his spirituality. The delegate to Damascus
was must one example of his power, influence and prowess to command
people, situations, and circumstances. He was, he believed, in total
control. People responded to Saul. They listened to him, followed him,
respected him and performed for him whatever he asked. He had achieved
remarkable recognition and respect. To defy Saul was to defy one’s
allegiance to Judaism.

3) Saul had high expectations. Like other men of his day, Saul
understood that if you did things well, if you planned, put in the hard
work, things would get done. The more you planned, the better they’d be.
His world was one in which he could have high expectations and enjoy the
inevitable results of his work. It was, he believed, the way the world
worked. You get what you deserve; you reap what you sow.

4) Saul was virtually unstoppable. Saul believed that he was
unstoppable. His wishes, his desires, his plans would all succeed. God
was, he believed, on his side. After all, didn’t his long string of
successes demonstrate this? He was on the fast track. He could have
whatever he desired. Nothing, he thought, nothing could stop him in his
zealous pursuit of his self-styled perception of what God called him to
do.

5) His supporters urged him forward. All the people around him
praised him, lauded him, supported and encouraged him. Other leaders
gave him recognition and support to give him the impression that
everything he was doing was the right thing to do. Why should he
question his actions? After all, he had the full support of his people.
And, he felt, God was with him.

Saul’s Spiritual Transformation

In one moment, Jesus Christ changed all that in Saul’s life. The
dramatic way by which Jesus called Saul began a process of intense
searching that lasted perhaps the rest of Saul’s life. Indeed, he went
through difficult times of intense searching both in Damascus in
Ananias’ home and during his fourteen years in Arabia.

A major result of his searching was, as he indicated in Philippians
three was that everything in his life before the trip to Damascus was
all "skubala", i.e. "excrement." Through this
painful, heart-wrenching, mid-life spiritual transformation, he
recognized that even if he had faith that could move mountains and could
clang on like the loudest symbol, without God’s love he was nothing.

In the middle of his life, he finally began to realize that the only
fulfillment he could have that would satisfy was not his successes.
Instead, realizing a sense of joy and fulfillment in God’s calling could
come only in his connection with and being "in Christ." To
live, he wrote to the Philippians, "is Christ. To die is
gain." Furthermore, as he wrote in Philippians 3, he
"considered everything loss compared to the surpassing greatness of
knowing Christ…"

Our Spiritual Transformation

We all may have to go to Damascus. Like Saul, perhaps all of us
experience to varying degrees the sense of being in control, the sense
of believing that we will change the world and that when we achieve
success, we will have arrived at the fullness of the realization of what
it means to be God’s servants.

But when we arrive at that point of success, we still find there’s a
sense of loneliness, dissatisfactions, a sense of undetermined
existential malaise. What we’ve done, what we’ve achieved, what we’ve
struggled for, sweated for, and given our life for somehow has cheated
us from the satisfaction and joy we thought it would bring…and the
affirmation we deserved. Somehow, all we’ve done still leaves us empty,
disillusioned, and strangely isolated.

Looking For Answers

While going through a search trying to figure out what’s wrong and
why we feel the way we do, we may even experience depression and/or a
lowering of energies. We may look for answers in our relationships. We
may look for answers in new challenges. We may look for answers in new
friendships and pursuits. We look for belonging, we look for purpose, we
look for a reason for it all.

But, whatever we try, the answers don’t come..at least not easily
and not immediately. The harder we search, the more frustrated and
bewildered we become as we sense a loss of control, a sense that
something really important in our lives is missing.

Damascus Experience: The Result Of Shattered Expectations

Sometimes we recognize this beginning sense of calling after great
failure or disappointment. It may be triggered by church conflict,
family disruption, divorce, the realization that children are becoming
more independent from their parents and home, the loss of a parent,
confidant, close friends, or the sense that your vocation is somehow not
as fulfilling as you expected it to be.

These and other events all shatter our beliefs that the rules of
this world are "tit-for-tat," "you pat my back, I’ll pat
yours," "you reap what you sow," "work hard and
success will follow," "bad things never happen to good
people," "God will never let anything bad happen in your life
because you love Him," etc.

The Searching

In this searching, we will often find ourselves using what Roger
Pearman and Sarah Albritton in their book, I’m Not Crazy, I’m Just Not
You: The Real Meaning of The Sixteen Personality Types (Davides Black
Publishing, 1996) call the compensatory "inferior function" of
our personality.

According to the Myers-Briggs personality type paradigm, this
basically means that if we’re extroverted, during this searching we will
become more introverted (or vice versa). If we’re a "sensing"
type, we will utilize the related inferior function of
"intuition" and so forth. During this search, our inferior
function becomes our "teacher" to give us direction and lead
us to a greater, more in-depth recognition of God’s calling for us.

This searching characteristically may cause us to reach deeply into
our selves and resource areas of our personality which we have ignored
or left largely unattended to prior to our own "trip to
Damascus." As we resource these little used areas, we may begin to
discover new strength, new balance, a new realization of God’s calling
and giftedness to you.

Enduring The Pain

This struggle is painful. It is painful to give up and leave behind
a familiar way of life. It’s painful to leave behind attitudes which
have carried us so far. It’s painful to realize that the accomplishments
we have achieved are really empty, meaningless, and subject to decay.
It’s painful that all that we have gone through to achieve them really
didn’t give us the satisfaction that we really hoped our efforts would
give.

Not everyone can face the pain. Not everyone can go through it
effectively. Some, due to their fear, will try to deny it, avoid it, or
somehow ignore it…perhaps with just reason.

Make no mistake. As Paul discovered, the mid-life trip to Damascus
is the beginning of a painful process. Some have likened to it
"slow electroshock therapy." The major parts of this
transformation can take several years before the darkness of searching
begins to show a light of hope at the end of the struggle and
possibilities for a totally new way of viewing the world. After all the
pain, however, the results may be a whole new, more satisfied and
spiritual life for those who have endured and gone the whole way down
the Damascus Road.

Finding Truth In Paradox

During this struggle, we don’t necessarily doubt our faith. We don’t
give up our believe in Jesus. We still believe in His forgiveness, in
His grace, etc. All these things still hold true.

Yet, in this searching, we have to begin wrestling with the deeper
truths of God’s working in our lives and the lives of others. We begin
to look for those deeper truths, a deeper and more complete
understanding of just how does God work in our lives, a searching for
what really matters to me…and God.

Often, these deeper truths are paradoxes. Paradoxes such as Jesus’
teaching, "if you lose your live you will find it" and Saul’s
lesson that it’s only when we’re blind that we see. We also begin to
learn that suffering can bring the greatest satisfaction and that the
tears of loss can bring us the greatest tears of joy.

During such times, God is just beginning to deepen our spirituality,
our calling, our sense of self and lead us, perhaps, to the profound,
existential awareness and understanding that the greatest things in this
life are the lowly things, the humbled things. And that the greatest of
us will be last and the humble will be exalted.

Looking For Answers

As we look for answers, we may search the Scriptures more intently.
We may also look to other literatures–mythology, philosophy, popular
psychology, classic Christian writings such as St. Augustine’s
Confessions, religious writings of the orient, et al–to help discover
the answers to bring us to a new understanding of life and faith, to
bring us to a higher level of awareness and connectedness in God’s
calling to us.

It’s strange, but sometimes when we’re dealing with conflict and
can’t figure out why the conflict is so difficult, and why we’re having
so much trouble recovering personally from the conflict, sometimes the
reason we’re not recovering so quickly is because the conflict has
triggered something deep within us: the not-yet-realized fact that we
have just begun our trip to Damascus. We are being confronted with the
possibility of radical spiritual transformation.

It Affects Both Men And Women

The Damascus experience affects both men and women. Though each go
through the experience differently, the call is the same. Experiencing
what is known as the gender crossover, men will explore those items
stereotypically considered by society to be more "feminine"
while women will explore more "masculine" areas.

Men, formerly driven by externals such as money, success,
recognition, and being in control may revert to a more passive,
intuitive way of life. Women, formerly tied to their external beauty,
identification with childbearing and motherhood, and other stereotypical
"feminine" ideals and pursuits, may become more outgoing and
take on more stereotypically "masculine" characteristics of
leadership. They may direct their energies outward to make a difference
in the lives of others.

Sister Theresa was but one example of a women who, after being on
the spiritual road to Damascus, left the convent in her middle age to
follow a deeper calling to the poor of India. It was her midlife
spiritual transformation that led to her world-wide renown for assisting
the poor.

Are You En Route To Damascus?

You may be on the "Road To Damascus" if… * You are
experiencing or have just gone through intense church conflict * You are
experiencing unparalleled success, yet it brings no joy. * You are
finding out that you don’t always get out of life what you put into it.
* You are finding that things do go wrong and that you are powerless to
stop it. * Your oldest child and/or youngest child is in high school and
independent * Until now, you have been in control of you life but are in
a situation which is out of control. * You are experiencing energy loss
or unexplained depression. * You are feeling alone and afraid, yet
somehow curiously expectant for "something" * You are
struggling to integrate the personal and the transpersonal, the social
and the sacred. * You are finding that things which used to give you
satisfaction and enjoyment simply don’t anymore. * You find yourself
looking in "strange" places for answers * You find yourself
not so outgoing, controlling, judgmental, etc as you used to be (or vice
versa). Instead you find yourself in the opposite emotions. * You have
lost significant relationships due to death, moving away, betrayal, etc.
* Your life circumstances have changed dramatically. * You are between
35 and 45 (other factors can affect this age range)

A Mid-Life Crisis???

Admittedly, the indicators listed above sound like the so-called
"Mid-Life Crisis." I don’t believe the Mid-Life crisis is as
much as a "crisis" as it is a normal stage to engender
unparalleled opportunities for spiritual transformation and growth.
Unfortunately, many western societies have de-spiritualized this
spiritual transformation relegating the "trip to Damascus" to
a clinically sterile, psychological quasi-dysfunctional condition called
a "Mid-Life Crisis."

In contrast to modern western societies, other cultures and peoples
in our world not only recognize the importance of this stage of renewal,
but they also have specific rites of passage celebrating this remarkable
stage of growth. Whether it be the recognition of menopause in women or
the honorable ascent of males to a special place of eldership within
their tribal community, these other cultures celebrate the spiritual
transformation depicting it as an event of joyful passage–not a time of
"crisis."

Are You On The Way To Damascus?

The midlife "Trip To Damascus" can be a life-changing,
spiritual journey. If you’re on the way to Damascus or if God is working
the transformation through you right now, let God work His extraordinary
possibilities for deepened spirituality and personal growth in your
midlife "Saul-to-Paul" transformation.