Can I pray for you in any
way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.
In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** Follow The Christian
Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk
** Like posts and send friend
requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn
** Become a Follower of
The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
I delight greatly in the Lord; my
soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and
arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like
a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Isaiah 61:10
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
What is the experience of coming to
Christ like?
We can look to the scriptures for
the answers.
One verse I have always enjoyed
comes from the 5th chapter of Second Corinthians. Maybe you have heard it
before.
Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new
has come. v. 17 (GNT)
As you can see, there is a defining
line in one’s life marked by the day they accepted Jesus as their Savior.
Anything prior to that, referred to as the old in the verse from 2 Corinthians,
was BC (before Christ) and anything afterwards when one becomes someone new is
AC (after Christ). At the line is the place of transformation, the moment when
everything changed.
So let’s look first at who we are
BC. Romans 3:23 sums it up pretty concisely:
“Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence.”
Sin separates from God and the life
He desires to have with us now and in the future. It drags us away from His
salvation offering and binds us to the world and its wicked ways. We struggle
and struggle to find meaning in life and when we think we might start to get a
clue, we find out that there was really nothing of substance to what we tried
to hold on to and we end up slipping back to where we were, sometimes even
deeper into the abyss of living for nothing but this world and its trappings.
We want to believe in ourselves so much. We fool ourselves into thinking we can
be self sufficient without a need for help from anyone or anything. We try and
carry our own burdens until one day we realize we can no longer bear the weight
of them anymore. We yearn to find a place where we can have peace and
reassurance, some sense of certainty in an uncertain world.
Where can we possibly find that?
Typically, it’s in this place of
desperate longing for something better than this world can give that we find
the only source of our true hope in Jesus Christ. We come to Him seeking
something new, something better than the old life experiences we had to that
point. We’re ready to surrender and sacrifice whatever is necessary in order to
improve our lives today and forever.
And so we come to Jesus. We confess
our sins and ask forgiveness. We profess our deep need for Him and acknowledge
that we can only find salvation in Him. We come before Him willing to change
who we are in order to find joy and hope and love.
Then it happens. He transforms us
as we give up who we were to be who He was. That’s what separates a Christian
from someone just living for the world’s ways. For when you are in Christ, you
must live Christ-like and that means following these two verses from Romans, chapter
12:
Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service
and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer. Do not
conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you
inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the
will of God—what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect. vv. 1-2
Jesus lived to carry out His Father’s
business and did so to a fault. He never lost focus on what He was sent to do.
He was always ready to help anyone in need, whether that person needed healing
or instruction or love or even resurrection. Jesus was never in life for
Himself and as we live more and more like Him, we don’t live for ourselves
either but willingly and freely give of our time, treasure, and talent to make
a kingdom difference for God and those He places in our lives.
This is living AC when everything
springs up new in your life. You have a new focus, a new commitment, a new game
plan, all from a newfound Savior and Lord who wants to have a relationship with
you as intimate as a husband and wife, beautifully adorning you with elements
of His character and Spirit. Look at today’s verse from Isaiah 61:
I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has
clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of His
righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride
adorns herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10
Note here the outcome of an AC
lifestyle. For where there was once stress and worry and fear and anxiety in
the midst of life’s uncertainties and hardships in your old (BC) life, now you
find your life new and full of delight, your soul rejoicing in the Lord Jesus who
came to die for you, covering the penalty for your sins while saving you from
death and the grave. Out of His longing to live with you forever, He longed for
you to enter into a relationship with Him and when you did, He clothed you with
the garments of His salvation and arrayed you in His robes of righteousness.
Beautifully adorned, you became His and He became yours.
It’s a beautiful image of the new
life that only comes through Jesus, the One who is the way and the truth and
the life, the only One who can bring us to the Father (John 14:6).
Friend, where are you at today in
your life?
Are you living a BC or AC life?
Only you know the answer to that
question but if you are stuck in your life without Jesus, I encourage you to
leave that old life behind and watch everyone become new for you this very day.
Jesus is waiting to change your
life forever.
Amen
In
Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
No comments:
Post a Comment