In passing, our principal witness to the world is simply our transformed lives. Integrity and purity which stands out in this dark world. In one of his books on revival, Leonard Ravenhill wrote, “The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, and make that man holy and put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.” The end-product of the transforming power of God is holiness. The Bible word for this new life with transformed character and transformed values is holiness. Through the 20th Century there is no greater example than Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Think about St Francis of Assissi who grew up very wealthy but gave away all his possessions, took vows of poverty and devoted his life to serving the poor and needy. Or rather it turns this messed up sin-spoilt upside-down world the right way up again. The gospel of Jesus Christ turns the world upside down. This will also involve transformed values. God is at work so that the Character of Christ is reproduced in us. Tozer wrote, “The essence of repentance is to move across from one sort of person to another is: the liar becomes truthful the thief, honest the lewd, pure the proud, humble.” It starts with the godly sorrow which produces sincere repentance, which in turn leads to a change in character. We can expect to see this transforming power of Christ in a number of ways. There are Christians you meet and seeing them now it is almost impossible to believe that they were once criminals and prisoners, or drug addicts or alcoholics, or prostitutes or abusers. Prodigals who were throwing their lives away, returning home and being transformed into children of God! “My Son was lost but now is found – was dead but now is alive again!” Sinners transformed into saints. But Jesus also changed all kinds of people from respectable Pharisees like Nicodemus to prostitutes like Mary Magdalene and professional thieves (sorry, tax collectors) like Matthew and Zaccheus. And one more man we know well who experienced transforming power of Christ was that feared enemy of Christians, the Pharisee Saul transformed into Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles by his encounter with the Risen Jesus on the Damascus Road. From ordinary fishermen like Peter and Andrew and James and John into the leaders of the Early Church. The power of Jesus Christ who transformed the lives of all kinds of people. That power of Christ is ALREADY in our lives here – today – now! The power of Christ which turns water into wine and heals the sick and opens the eyes of the blind and sets the captives free and even brings the dead to life. Jesus Christ the Son of God has the power to transform the present and shape the future. The transforming power of God is able to save from the guttermost to the uttermost! The power of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, can deal with everything in our past, all our sin and failure and ignorance and rebellion. The start of a lifelong process of being transformed into the image of Christ. A new life has begun! (J.B.Phillips)īut being born again is only the start of the Christian life. When someone becomes a Christian he becomes a brand new person inside. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation the old is gone, the new has come! (2 Cor. When a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly it becomes a totally new creature. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. He would pray for an outpouring of “the transforming power of God – power which saves from the guttermost to the uttermost.” The transforming power of God! That is what Paul is talking about here in 2 Corinthians 3:18.Ģ Corinthians 3 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Upside-Down Kingdom – the Beatitudes (9)īack in Tunbridge Wells 30 years ago and more whenever we had a time of prayer we had great saint called Claud Martin who would always pray the same prayer. Pastoral Letters to Timothy and Titus (10).Continue in what you have learned and believed (19).
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