Destined for A Miraculous Transformation

Anyone that is familiar with God’s Word knows that the Apostle Paul made an amazing spiritual transformation. He went from being in utter darkness, imprisoning and murdering believers in Jesus Christ, to preaching and teaching the Gospel himself. This was pretty extreme by anyone’s estimation. Imagine the kind of shift he had to make in his attitude, mindset, and heart. Only the Lord could have done this. To secure his destiny and fulfill his purpose in the plan and Will of God, Paul needed to totally abandon his religion and just about everything else he was taught since childhood. He had to forget what he thought he understood about life and be retrained in the way of Jesus Christ. Many of us haven’t contemplated Paul’s transformation with much depth, but we must, because this is the kind of transformation God desires for each of us.

Heavenly Father commands in Romans 12:2(NLT), “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Becoming a NEW person is God’s goal for every believer. There can be no doubt that this is a radical transformation. We are required to leave all remnants of darkness behind. Ephesians 4:22 tells us that we must put off our former way of life which was full of sin, and we are to put on our new life in Christ. And this new life in Christ is totally righteous, totally holy, and totally love.

We must never forget that although God accepts us as we are when we come to Him, He doesn’t want us to remain that way. He transforms us because we need to be transformed, and sometimes we don’t recognize this need until some experience or event in life knocks us for a loop. It catches us completely by surprise, and often makes us realize that we’re not quite where we need to be with our faith and believing.

We cannot move into our promised land without truly accepting and soaking in’ the One who was promised. In other words, we can’t grow in faith without maturing spiritually in Christ. This means that we must actively put on more of the mind and example of Jesus Christ with each passing day. Most of us are not having the kind of Road to Damascus experience like the Apostle Paul, and we have nothing like his assignment to carry forth. Through Christ, Paul helped to develop and increase the body of Christ in its infancy, and this was no small feat.

The complexities Paul faced are completely foreign to most of us. He expanded the church exponentially, yet there was no internet, no hand-held Bibles to pass out, and no way to dole out immediate correction from God’s Word when believers were heading in the wrong direction. So, those of us living today have nothing like Paul’s circumstances. He is certainly to be admired and respected because he accomplished a whole lot with very little.

Part of the reason that Paul made such tremendous gains for the Kingdom of God is because of his humility in Christ after he was converted. He yielded himself to God totally through Christ and made himself utterly teachable. Paul surrendered to the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and we must do the same. God never overstepped Paul’s free-will choice or made Paul do anything. This man of God presented himself as a living sacrifice before our Heavenly Father, and Paul considered all the suffering he endured for the sake of Christ to be nothing compared to the prize of glory that awaited him.

Jesus Christ is coming! This is imminent. He will not be delayed. Ephesians 5:25-27 tells us that Jesus Christ gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins, and he did this so God can present us to him as a glorious church without blemish. Soaking in this truth means we understand the completeness in Christ that God has made available. And the reason He made it available is because He intends us to walk in the wholeness of Christ. God is not redundant. Everything He does is purposeful and has a reason. Christ is coming back soon for a body of believers that is without blemish, and it’s our responsibility to believe it, put it on, and walk in it every moment of each day.

We all have different life experiences and varying levels of biblical knowledge and spiritual maturity but make no mistake about God’s mandate. It is that all of us will have the same heart and the same mind. We all must have an attitude that demonstrates our willingness to be transformed by God.

The older we become, the more we become stuck in our ways. And many of us can’t move out of our own way because we want things the way they’ve always been. This will not do if becoming all that God wants us to be is our goal. Not only should we want to be better for our Heavenly Father, we must hunger for His righteousness. There must be a deep and abiding desire and longing to put on more of Christ.

This is the heart that God is looking for in us. We must be in agreement with what His Word says about us in order to witness the manifestation of spiritual increase and abundance. And if we’re not hungry for it, we’re not going to see it.

The mistake is to assume that we are where God desires us to be in our spiritual walk—that we’ve done enough, and we don’t need to do any more. He is the only One that can tell us if this is so, and if we have any doubt about it whatsoever, we must humble ourselves, pray, and ask Him to show us. James 1:5-6(NLT) says, “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone.” We can be confident that if we are humble, the Father will show us what we need to see. Our part is to have a willingness to allow the Father to reveal His heart FOR us TO us, and to show us our glorified selves in Christ, because this is the mark we must meet.

We are very comfortable with accepting that God did the miraculously supernatural thousands of years ago, but He demands that we recognize He has not changed. He’s doing the same marvelous works today, and He desires to do this in each of us. Once we recognize that God yearns to finish what He started in us, and we get our true identity in Christ firmly in our minds, we must seek the Father with all that we are! We must embrace the miraculous transformation we are destined to make, because God has secured our happiness through the person of Jesus Christ. The greater we walk in him, the happier and more fulfilled our lives will be, and most importantly, we’ll be ready when he returns. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

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