There comes a moment though in nearly every western where somebody makes a horse do something that it would never do if left to its own devices. In the movies I have seen horses jump out of moving trains, and run up alongside grizzly bears. In another I saw a man ride his horse into a burning saloon. Sometimes they are ridden into the midst of a blizzard or out into a desert when every fiber of their equine being was probably telling them it would make more sense not to do those things. In “The Revenant,” for example, Leonardo Dicaprio’s character rides his poor horse straight off the edge of a tall cliff and into the side of a pine tree. In the opening scenes of “Dances With Wolves,” Kevin Costner’s character tries to commit suicide by riding his horse back and forth in front of the enemy’s lines. Horses love sudden, loud noises, right?

Wild horses, or even riderless ones, would never do those things. However, when a horse’s will is surrendered to that of its human rider they find themselves doing strange, unnatural things and going into strange, unnatural places.

It is the same for human beings who surrender their will to the Holy Spirit. One of the great evidences of the Spirit’s activity in our lives is the movement toward things, and people and places that we would never move toward if governed by our own natural predilections.

This Sunday, as we continue our study through the great conversion accounts in the book of Acts, we will be unpacking the story of Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road in Acts 9. In a very short period of time, Paul would go from a persecutor of the church to a member of it. He went from breathing threats and murder against Christians to a bold proclaimer of the Gospel, and when I think about the life that Paul would go on to live after his Damascus Road encounter I think of those horses that surrender their will to a human rider.

In 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, Paul wrote, Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

Why did he live like that? Why did he live a life of such hardship and difficulty? He willingly moved toward people and situations that most rational people would run away from. Ultimately, like Leonardo Dicaprio’s horse, it would cost him his life. According to early church historians, Paul was thrown to the wild animals in Rome as a Martyr. “How unnatural,” we might say, and that is exactly right. It is evidence of the supernatural that he lived in such a way.