Published: April 16, 2008 01:22 pm            

Religion for Week of April 16, 2008

NEWTON — Let me start by asking a very personal question. Are you all you thought you would be once you professed Jesus Christ as you Lord and Savior? Did you suddenly transform into a new creature with all old things becoming new or has it been a slow and sometimes painful process?

You know what, when I trusted Christ as my Lord and Savior everything didn’t just suddenly change. I still had a slight desire to fulfill the desires of the flesh. Vodka and Tequila tasted good! (They don’t anymore). I still felt inadequate at certain things, and I certainly had no clue that I would actually be used by God as a pastor.

The scars of my past were still present along with the shame, yet I knew something new was going on. Something quite different and transforming was taking place. There is no doubt that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit had entered into my life.

God the Father after He had washed me clean by the blood of His Son had begun to help heal the wounds, the disappointments of life, and of sin, some my own, some the sins of others by way of the Holy Spirit. He even began to change the way that I saw myself and the way that I saw others.

From day one of my salvation there has been a process of growth toward seeing myself through God’s eyes and live life accordingly. No longer did I see myself through eyes that had been blinded and deceived by Satan but I began to understand and realize just how important I was to God. I was beginning to realize just how valuable I was and everyone is for that matter to God.

Just imagine for one minute the price that God paid to redeem you. More precious than silver or gold, God redeemed you with “the precious blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.” I’m valuable to God and you are too. When I think of the price that was paid for me, I can’t help but fall to my knees and praise the name of the Lord. I can’t help but let the Holy Spirit forever change who I was to what God would have me to be.

The changes in my life seem almost unbelievable from an intimidated, quiet, self-centered individual to a humbled, assured servant of the Lord. Still, after 10 years, the process continues and I pray that it will continue to the day that I die.

The same is true for you as well, maybe not exactly in the same way, but the changes, the transformation in your life has been brought on by the power of the Holy Spiritin a step by step, day by day sanctifying process. Just like me, when you became a Christian, you became a new person inside. But just like me as well the external changes haven’t come as quick sometimes.

The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”. The newness Paul talks about is spiritual in nature. It describes the internal changes that begin to affect us as we start to grow spiritually in the weeks, months and even years after our conversion.

My past has not changed. The pains were still present, but my understanding of that past and those pains gradually changed. I still had the same earthly mother, my earthly father was still the same as he had always been, gone. But the Holy Spirit changed the way that I thought of such things and made it possible for the past to be just that, the past. The past couldn’t be changed so why consider it. It was time to move forward in a new life, in a new future. Kinda exciting!

As I began to grow in my new life, as a new creature, I also realized just how important being part of a loving nurturing church family was. The Holy Spirit was doing the initial transforming work, but God chooses to send other believers into our lives to help with the process as well.

Josh McDowell in his book, “See Yourself As God Sees You”, uses the story of how Jesus responded to Lazarus’s death to illustrate how God uses other believers as part of the transformation process. When Jesus approached the tomb of his dear, dead friend Lazarus, He cried out, “Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43). On the Master’s command, the man who had been dead for four days come alive. Lazarus began a new life.

Lazarus had been wrapped in a linen burial shroud that had been soaked in spices to help preserve the corpse. At Christ’s word, new life went right through those grave clothes and into the body, and Lazarus hobbled out of the tomb wrapped up like a mummy.

But, released from the tomb, Lazarus no longer needed his grave clothes. They were definitely an impediment to his activity on the outside. So Jesus told Lazarus’s family and friends, “Loose him, and let him go!” (vs44). I just love that verse, “Loose him and let him go!”. Christ setting the captive soul free.

With the help of his family and friends, Lazarus was unwrapped and set free to experience his new life. This is where God enlists the help of other believers in the transformation process. Notice that the grave clothes did not fall off the moment Christ called out. There was a process involved in getting Lazarus unwrapped after he had come to life again.

This story paints a picture of what the transformation process is like in our lives. When we become Christians, and I pray you have, Christ gives us new life. It is as if He calls out to us, “Come forth! Come out of your old, dead existence. Come out and enjoy the new life I have prepared for you. Come alive!” Christ is the initiator of the new life. It is his power that activates the transformation process.

But, like Lazarus, we emerge from the tomb of our past shrouded in grave clothes. We may be bound by the negative influences of our family, teachers, peers or whatever. We may be tied up by a faulty self image. Our own sin has bound us. Christ’s invitation to new life penetrates the grave clothes, those things that bind us, and new life begins, but we are still hobbled by the wrappings. We still need to shed that faulty self-perception we have, our deceived need to be freed from the sinful and negative influences of the past.

The Lord could have chosen to have Lazarus to have Lazarus burst out of his grave clothes in a display of power. But he didn’t. Christ chose to involve those people around him. He said to Lazarus’s friends and family, “You unwrap him! You be part of the process of releasing him from the grave clothes! You help him in the transformation process!”

And Christ does the same with us. He continues the process of transformation, sanctification, by bringing into our lives other believers who love us enough to help us see ourselves as God sees us, valuable enough, useful enough to be “redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb.”

If Christ has called out your name, and called you forth from the tomb of this empty life, I pray you have responded by allowing him, through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to transform you life and then in obedience to Him, I also pray you have joined yourself with a body of fellow believers, so that God may continue the transformation process using them and yourself as well.

Be loosed, come forth from out of the grave, exchange your grave clothes for the garments of righteousness and be part of a Bible believing, God-fearing, people loving Church this Sunday, every Sunday, and every day. Then hang on and let God, the Holy Spirit and your fellow believers transform your life. You want miss the old one.

Mark Kilgore/Bethel Baptist Church

        

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