"If you think that submitting yourself to Jesus sounds like a terrible burden, I want you to know that it is an enormous relief. I say that because of this account of Saul’s conversion recorded for us in Acts 26.
Goads were sharpened sticks used by shepherds to prod stubborn animals. The Lord says to Saul, “You are kicking against the goads!”
Imagine a row of metal spikes, like javelins, lying horizontal about two feet off the ground, pointing at you. A man comes up beside you. He is angry, and with all the force he can muster, he kicks the spikes. The spikes go through the toe of his trainers, and the man pulls back in pain.
But his pain makes him every more angry, and so he lashes out again. The spikes sink into his shoe and blood now flows freely from his foot. He can’t stop, and you wince as he steps up and kicks again and again until his foot is reduced to pulp.
“Saul, Saul, It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” You don’t hurt the spikes when you kick against the goads, all that happens is that you injure yourself. And the more you do it, the worse it gets.
Is that a picture of what you are doing? Repeating time after time what has hurt you before. It is as if you are driven by some inner compulsion. You keep doing what hurts you and you don’t know how to stop!
There’s only one way to stop and that is to submit yourself entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ. “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (Acts 22:10). If you will submit yourself entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ today, you will know an enormous relief.
Lord, I have been kicking against the spikes. I have been acting as if I was the sovereign Lord of my own life, deciding what I will believe and what I will do. I have been acting as if I was my own god, and in the process I have only been destroying myself. I now see that my only hope is to submit myself completely to you.
Here is the good news. When Saul says, “Who are you Lord?” The answer is not: “I am Jesus, whom you have been persecuting, and you’re done for!” That would have been justice, but Jesus meets him, not with justice, but with mercy.
“I received mercy... The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 1:13, 14). He received that mercy as a sample of the mercy that Jesus Christ offers to all of us today.
Metal spikes were hammered into the hands and feet of Jesus, so that you could receive mercy, and kicking against the spikes would not be the end for Saul or for you."