Article February 15, 1988 Issue

The power that brings spiritual conversion

Misdirected enthusiasm can be just as bad as, or worse than, apathy. Without spiritual priorities we are apt to miss the mark.

Joe Eller

Have you ever said of someone, "If only all his energy were directed into right channels, he could achieve almost anything"? Probably we've all encountered people like that—all enthusiasm and zeal but misguided or misdirected in their goals. And what about ourselves? Do we feel sometimes that we're spinning our wheels, going nowhere fast, even though we commit vast amounts of time and effort to what we're doing?

Maybe we need a new set of priorities. Is there a way to bring our energies under a discipline that channels them into truly productive ends? And if we have been going the wrong way, can we make a reversal and get on the road toward worthwhile goals? Yes, we can. Consider the Apostle Paul. We first meet him in the New Testament as Saul—a zealot apparently determined to extinguish the fledgling Christian movement in the years following Christ Jesus' life.

What zeal Saul had! What energy! No one could mistake him for a sluggard. Yet his zeal was seriously misdirected. His energy amounted to willful mortal drive. What the world really needed at that time was just the opposite—an energetic devotion to spreading the healing message of Christ.

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