In football, they have the huddle. The whole purpose of the huddle is to give the team about thirty seconds to call the next play. That’s it. Now, here’s what’s funny—sixty thousand people might be watching that huddle. And they don’t mind. They understand. You’ve got to get organized. The quarterback needs to know where he’s going. The ends need to know their route. The backs need to know their assignment.

But let me tell you something obvious: nobody pays between 250 and 1000 bucks just to watch the huddle. People come to see the team break the huddle, snap the ball, and move down the field against a defense doing its darnedest to stop them. The 60,000 plus Number 12s ("fans", for the uninitiated) want to know: did your practice actually make a difference? Will it work?

Now, here’s where we as Christians get into trouble. We get high on our huddles. Sunday morning, Worship Nights, Sunrise Services — we go nuts over the huddle. “Man, worship today was amazing!” “Our quarterback calls plays better than any other quarterback in the league!” We end up critiquing the music, the sermon length, whether or not people were friendly.

But the huddle only exists so we can play the game. The effectiveness of your church cannot be measured by how well you do on Sunday morning. It's when you get out there - in the world - in your own unique harvest field, if you will. THIS is what we see in the Book of Acts, chapter 8.

There are certain people in life who leave a lasting impression on you.

Spend enough time around someone and eventually you begin to sound like them. You start using their phrases, picking up their habits, laughing at the same things they laugh at. Sometimes married couples do this so much that they can practically finish each other’s sentences. Children pick up expressions from their parents without even realizing it. Why? Because proximity leaves its mark. Time spent together changes us.

That is exactly what happened in our text this morning.

Remember the old tv game show Name That Tune? Where you are given a certain number of notes and you have to figure out what song is being played? Well this morning I want to play a version of that game. We’ll call it Name That Person.

I’m going to give you some clues, straight out of Scripture, and you keep track of the amount of clues it takes for you to guess the person

“I am like one born at the wrong time…”

“I am less than the least of all God’s people…"

“I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin…”

“I know that nothing good lives in me…”

“For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…” So...who does that describe?

Alright, let’s shift the clues.

A man who breathed out threats and murder against the followers of Jesus…
A man who went from house to house dragging men and women off to prison to face possible execution…
A man who was on the scene approving of the lynching of first Christian martyr…

Name that person.

Same answer. Saul… who would later be known as Paul.

Do you see the tension? In the last set of clues you have a man who seems to be so confident of his convictions and commitment to doing the right thing. But on the other hand, you get this man who recognizes his brokenness - like the tax-collector in the parable who goes to the temple and can't even look up at God, he is so cognizant of his sinfulness. He is humble, he acknowledges his weakness, he is no longer self-righteous.

And somehow, those two realities live in the same person. Which raises the question: what happened in between? What made this self-righteous, confident persecutor of the church become a selfless, humble servant --- one who would actually go from NUMBER 1 persecutor of the Early Church to the NUMBER 1 missionary to the Gentile world?

The answer, of course, is Jesus. But more specifically, the answer is that Jesus refused to leave Saul where he was. And that really is what spiritual growth is all about.