May 25, 2008
SoulTalk
The Butterfly Effect of One Soul Talking
SoulTalk17.mp3

Pastor Wade Burleson
Emmanuel Baptist Church
Enid OK

Acts 9:10-18 (ESV)

10. Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord."
11. And the Lord said to him, "Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying,
12. and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight."
13. But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.
14. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name."
15. But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.
16. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."
17. So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit."
18. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized.

In our text we find a disciple of Jesus Christ, named Ananias, who has been commanded by God to go to a house where a man named Saul, who had been stricken blind by God on his way to Damascus, is praying. Ananias is to heal Saul of his blindness, but Ananias objects because he has heard of Saul of Tarsus and "the evil he has done" to Christians. But the Lord said to him: "God, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name" (Acts 9:15-16). These are five very key words.

1. God never promises a life of comfort or convenience.
   Life is all about knowing and enjoying God. He is the authentic source of pleasure; not His gifts, or His blessings, but God Himself. Some of us have an image of God that is deficient or an offense with God that is destructive. When that happens we substitute knowing and enjoying God with other things; and that is when we find our soul in trouble. A cure is not found in religion which says, "Do this, and your life will go well." A cure is found when someone, somewhere begins to speak the language of the soul - SoulTalk. SoulTalk helps a person see what life is all about.
2. A SoulTalker helps a person see life in terms of character, not comfort.
   SoulTalk helps someone see that the central battle in the soul is keeping the first-thing desire (to know and enjoy God) in first place. The central evil in the human soul is the natural tendency to elevate second-thing desires to first place. The central deception in the human soul is to believe that second-thing desires belong in first place, and that the core well-being of our soul depends on them. The central point of SoulTalk is to awaken and nourish the first-thing desire until the passion for God becomes the all consuming passion of the soul. Religion has no answer for the person whose life doesn't work out. But a soul in tune with God gives life to others. When knowing God becomes the passion of life, then character matters, not comfort.
3. The power of SoulTalk is seen in "The Butterfly Effect of One Soul Talking."
   In 1961 meteorologist Edward Lorenz was working computer simulations of weather and wanted to repeat the last steps of a previous simulation. Because computers at that time were slow and difficult to use, Lorenz tried to save time by entering .506 instead of the full .506127. Lorenz assumed that this minute difference in numbers would not significantly affect the results. To his surprise, the results of the second simulation were vastly different than the first, even though they should have been almost identical. Lorenz's work emphasized how important sensitivity to initial conditions can be in real-world applications such as weather forecasting. In 1963, Lorenz published his findings for the New York Academy of Sciences and spoke at several scientific conferences. He quoted a colleague who said that if Lorenz's theory were correct, the flap of a butterfly's wing in the Atlantic could cause a hurricane in the Pacific, and "The Butterfly Effect" was born. So, too, is the effect of one soul talking. All of Rome eventually converted to Christianity; Saul may have been the butterfly.