The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“Hope and Change”
“But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.
And they glorified God in me” (Galatians 1:23-24).
The Apostle Paul experienced great and profound change of heart and life when he met the Lord Jesus Christ, from persecution of Christ and His people, to preaching Christ to people for the glory of God.
This was Paul’s message always thereafter, a message of change that applied to believer and unbeliever alike. Unbelievers must be enlivened from spiritual death to life by the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the heart. Having been so wondrously changed, Christians must experience ongoing change of growth, being grateful for what God has already done, but ever realizing how much more of He and His truth remains to be known (Ephesians 2:1; 4:15). We never rest on our laurels, remembering that an infinite God can never be fully discovered, nor can His truth ever be completely understood. “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18).
A significant aspect of this truth involves our confidence in God’s ability to change hearts, circumstances, situations, and conditions. This actually begins with the greatest of all transformations:
“Christ died… but God raised Him from the dead” (Romans 5:6; Acts 13:30).
All need for change must be viewed in the light of the Lord Jesus having passed from death to life. Like the disciples who heard Him promise His resurrection, had we seen the extremity of His suffering and death on the cross, we would have been sorely tempted to believe all hope for change was lost. This was not the case, as our Lord’s demise served as prelude to the darkest of all nights giving way to the brightest of all mornings. “One Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive” (Acts 25:19).
The same hope abides forevermore. The risen Christ, having experienced glorious change Himself, can change hearts and lives by the power of His resurrection. This we must believe because it is true, and because God works through us to apply His transforming grace as we trust Him. We must look into tombs and remember the saddest of them all from so long ago. That one became the scene and the source of God’s greatest miracle of replacing sorrow with joy. Yes, so long as the tomb of the Lord Jesus remains empty, born again believers must look at nothing without hope. Thereby, our hearts abide in peace, and thereby we experience in our own lives God’s faithful and ongoing work of change into the likeness of Christ “from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (II Corinthians 3:18).
“For Thou wilt light my candle. The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.”
(Psalm 18:28)
Weekly Memory Verse
“But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.”
(Exodus 1:12)
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