The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"Protocol of Change"
Change is coming. Be it minor, major, or somewhere in between, change is always coming in human experience. We anticipate some alterations of our existence. Others arrive at our doorstep unannounced. Many bless us, many challenge us, and most may not seem particularly consequential. The one that matters most and foretells of eternal consequence involves born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and God's wondrous purpose in our hearts and lives:
"Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Corinthians 3:18).
God redeemed us to make us like His Son in terms of character, relationship, word, and deed. He accomplishes this wondrous prospect by inhabiting us with the Holy Spirit, who progressively works in us to the reveal the Lord Jesus:
"Ye are the temple of the living God… Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father… He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (II Corinthians 6:16; Galatians 4:6; Philippians 1:6).
We play a role of response in God's protocol of change as by faith we trust and submit to His working to conform us to the spiritual and moral image of the Lord Jesus. We "work out" that which God "works in" by acknowledging and affirming His presence and power, and making choices of the heart to glorify and reveal the Lord Jesus as the Life of our lives (Philippians 2:12-13). This includes our humble admission that we require ongoing change in every aspect of our response to God. It cannot be otherwise since the goal and model of His purpose involves making us like the incomparable Christ. Indeed, if we could qualitatively measure the most Christlike believer on the planet in any moment, we would rejoice in the fact of our brother or sister shining so beautifully with the light of the Savior. However, we would also realize he or she has far to go in serving as an accurate reflection of the Lord Jesus in character, nature, and way.
"But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more" (I Thessalonians 4:9-10).
Change is coming, always. The greatest of all, and the one that most enables us to respond well to all others, is the change our Heavenly Father continually executes to conform us to the image of the Lord Jesus. How will He work today in each of our hearts and lives to fulfill His glorious purpose? We do not know. However, we do understand our role of trust, submission, and the realization that the process is ongoing. By His grace, may our progress be the same.
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."
(I John 3:2)
Weekly Memory Verse
He that is entered into His rest, he hath ceased from His own works, as God did from His.
(Hebrews 4:10)
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