NO NAME VESSELS

Acts 9:10,11 – Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And the Lord said to him, “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,

No one ever heard of Ananias, as far as the church world of his day was concerned he was a no name nobody. We never heard if he was a pastor, evangelist, or a prophet; actually we never heard he was anything. He showed up for this one moment, had a vision from the Lord, and ministered by the Holy Spirit to one of the most influential men in all history. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who knows anything about who we are or how we have been used by the Lord. As George Whitefield reportedly said, “Let the great decide what sort of man George Whitefield was”. I am sure the great day will have something to say about the role Ananias played in the history of Christianity. Here is how John Pollock describes this guy Ananias.

“As he hurried down the narrow lane past water-carriers already returning from the river, while the sunrise tipped the northern crags, he almost shouted, “Hallelujah!” So the Lord’s hand was not shortened. He had stretched it out to heal, and the wolf would lie down with the lamb as in the ancient prophecy. And he, Ananias the obscure (never heard of before or since), had been chosen to baptize Saul. This was to be the first example of a historical pattern that great ambassadors for Christ, however much prepared in other ways, would be brought to their vocation by unimportant agents: Augustine hears a child’s voice repeat, “Take up and read!”; John Wesley listens to an anonymous Moravian reading Luther; D. L. Moody, wrapping up shoes in a store, pauses for a few words from his Sunday school teacher; Charles Haddon Spurgeon, sheltering from a snowstorm, hears a working man in a snowbound minister’s pulpit.”

Obviously the Lord looks at our world with a different lens than the rest of us use. The world is more likely to choose a Saul to be a king rather than a David, after all Saul was tall and handsome, David was a rock slinging shepherd boy. Later in Paul’s life he shared his own thoughts about those the Lord uses. 1 Cor.1:26,27 – “For consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong…” So maybe you could be a no namer like Ananias, the great day will reveal everything.