Life-Changing Encounters with Christ and the Power of Transformation
- Jack Selcher
- Aug 25, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Summary
This article highlights the transforming power of encountering Christ through biblical and modern examples. Like Paul and Sundar Singh, true conversion changes attitudes toward sin, reshapes character, and produces a desire to serve Christ. Encouragement from believers confirms faith and nurtures growth. Genuine Christianity moves beyond private belief into public service, making believers useful to God and others as living testimonies of Christ’s ongoing work.
Life Changing Encounters with Christ
Few people have life-changing encounters with Christ as vivid as Paul's on the Road to Damascus. But some do.
Sundar Singh was bitterly hostile to the gospel in the early twentieth century. One morning while praying to his Hindu gods, he saw the form of Christ.
A voice said in Hindustani, “How long will you persecute me? I have come to save you. You were praying to know the right way. Why do you not take it?”1
Singh fell at Jesus’ feet with a wonderful sense of peace. Extraordinary signs marked his life after that.
Transformation That Follows True Conversion
Believing in Jesus transforms people. Transformation is marked by a changed attitude toward sin and self, changed character and conduct through the Holy Spirit’s power, and a longing to be like Jesus.
Encouragement Confirms New Believers
Part of being transformed is encouraging other believers. Ananias confirmed Paul’s Christian experience (Acts 9:17) and called him “brother.”
A student leader of a Christian group once challenged me to lead a Bible study. He said he believed that I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I am not sure I was. But his encouragement made me want to be filled with the Spirit!
Suppose someone visits your church whose past sins are as numerous as seeds on a strawberry. He professes Christ as Savior and Lord. Will you immediately accept him as a brother or make him prove himself for a year or two?
From Fear to Fellowship in the Church
The disciples in Jerusalem feared Paul and did not associate with him (Acts 9:26–27). Barnabas came to the rescue. He confirmed Paul’s Christian experience.
Saved to Serve and Proclaim Christ
Like Paul, you are saved to serve and tell others. At his conversion, Paul changed his mind about Jesus. Previously, he tried to stamp out the heresy he believed Jesus had started.
But in Acts 9:20, he preached in the synagogues that Christ was the Son of God. That amazed the Jews who heard him. What happened to this guy? Jesus was transforming him.
A Transformed Life That Serves Others
Years ago in Chicago, a drunken man headed toward Lake Michigan to drown himself. Somehow, he stumbled into Pacific Garden Mission.
The superintendent cared for him. The next morning, he explained the gospel to him. That day, God’s grace began to transform Harry Monroe. Eventually, he became superintendent of the mission.
A newspaper editorial described him as one of the most useful men in Chicago. Conversion is becoming useful to God and others.
Paul was useful to God in Damascus. He was not a flash-in-the-pan wonder. He preached as fervently in Jerusalem as in Damascus (Acts 9:29).
A professing Christian who is not serving God and others is a contradiction. Christianity is not a private affair.
Real Christians move from the private world of serving self into the public world of encouraging and serving others. Your testimony is your account of that ongoing transformation.
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