A Perspective Shift for the Next Time You Get Interrupted

I may not know you very well, but I know this: interruptions are one of your biggest irritations.

A red light, a stubbed toe, other people interjecting, you name it. Whenever something interrupts us, it tends to interrupt our peace. I know that to be true of even the most mild-mannered people. Here’s the problem: all kinds of regrets and relational tensions can arise from our reactions to those interruptions.

If you’re looking for some help in those peace-threatening moments, look no further than Paul - even with all his intensity.

It’s not the pain point you think it is

Paul was a man ablaze with intensity and set on his mission.

While we don't know all the details of his life before he met Jesus, I'm willing to bet that Paul’s intensity toward Jesus-followers wasn't just occupational. Luke tells us in Acts that he was breathing out 'murderous threats' toward them. We get the idea he was stopping at nothing to chase down and do away with Christians.

God's response to him? An interruption.

Upon being blinded in his encounter with Jesus, Paul was directed by Jesus into the city. Meanwhile, Jesus was also talking with a man in the city named Ananias about Paul’s arrival. After Ananias tried to give Jesus some advice about Paul, Jesus replied:

Sounds like payback, doesn't it? Paul had caused suffering, now he must suffer. At least that's what we often think.

And when you and I get interrupted, it feels like payback, doesn’t it?

But the first half of Jesus' response gives us a clue to the greater purpose of the interruption: Paul was Jesus’s “chosen instrument” to proclaim his name. And if that's true, perhaps Jesus was concerned with first shaping the messenger before he carried the message to the world.

In other words, our interruptions can be pain points. Or they can be starting points.

Interruption-shaped instruments

Have you considered the idea you’re a chosen instrument?

To live with that outlook - that our lives are instruments of our Creator - can begin to help us understand life’s interruptions as shaping us. For what? God’s purposes, and not our own.

There’s nothing like the interruptions pain and suffering bring about to open our eyes to everyone else’s pain and suffering.

Paul had inflicted much of it as a result of his own agenda. But Jesus had more for him, and more through him. Which meant some changes: no more murderous threats. No more persecution. No more of Paul's agenda. Jesus' name was at stake here.

Jesus had a different message for and through Paul’s life - and for yours and mine as well.

And he chose interruptions to forge that message, in order that we’d experience and express what He can do in the midst of the pain and suffering everyone experiences.

Living a life of ‘grace and peace to you’

Fast forward from what Jesus said regarding Paul, and years later we see what God produces from those interruptions.

Every single letter Paul wrote to the church (except Galatians) begins with a distinct phrase. Look at each letter he wrote, and the phrase - or a close variant of it - comes within the first 4 verses:

"Grace and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord."

The result of Paul's suffering was not the angst of a red light, stubbed toe, or interjection. It was not lashing out and pointing fingers. It was the conveying of grace and peace from the place he received it in his suffering - from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Everyone Paul came in contact with was greeted with the same thing as he proclaimed Jesus' name:

• In the beautifully elegant letter to the Romans: "Grace and peace..."

• In writing to the younger Timothy: "Grace and peace..."

• In a prison cell, writing to various churches: "Grace and peace..."

• In addressing issues and tensions in the church at Corinth: "Grace and peace..."

• And in a second letter to Corinth, from a deeply personal place, and perhaps still suffering: "Grace and peace..."

As you look at all these writings with the exact same greeting, be encouraged that the God who allows suffering in our lives is intent on using it in us to bring something through us: His grace, and His peace. It is His good news to us and through us.

Implication? Embrace today’s interruptions. He’s shaping you as His instrument.