Christian Living
As we enter once again another presidential election process, we can expect that one message that some will toss about is that of “positive change”. So people across our nation begin the process of waiting for the eventual election in order to see if the “good things” they’ve reaped might continue or that new things may soon come their way.
But I cannot help but look on all the impending furor and frenzy with a great deal of sadness for those who put their eggs in the basket of presidential politics. While the process of democratically electing our leaders is tremendously important and while I too feel strongly about the issues at stake and the candidates who will be running, the fact of the matter is that the persons appointed to the various posts of leadership in our government (including the top one) cannot meet the deepest needs of our lives.
What makes me sad is that we tend to collectively spend the energies of our passions on all sorts of causes and pastimes yet neglect the one thing that matters most: our own spiritual condition. Folks hope that those elected to office will somehow fix all their woes and make everything all right, but they still end up empty, frustrated and defeated.
Is it time for a change in America? Perhaps, but whatever changes take place on any political level are going to be incidental to you compared to your spiritual needs. For too many of us such changes are just deferments for the changes that should be taking place in our own individual lives that then bring about change in our small, but important circles of influence. The changes we generally pursue our mere smokescreens to cover gaping lacks of responsibility we each have for our own eternal destinies and the fact of our responsibility for others we could positively influence towards the Kingdom of God.
Is it time for a change in your life? Consider well the questions, “How has God changed my lie?” Or “Is God changing my life?” If we cannot answer either question with a “yes” or if the answer is unclear to you, let your heart open wide to the change that God’s love can bring to you starting now.
Such change fundamentally begins with the moment we surrender our sin and our self-will to God and come to Him in faith.
John chapter 3 records a religious leader named Nicodemus having approached Jesus to discuss the lofty matter of the Lord’s teachings. Nicodemus probably thought himself merely interested in conversing about some of the things that Jesus had been teaching.
Jesus’ response however was to get to the heart of the need of this theologically learned leader: “You must be born again,” He tells him in verse seven. Quite visible to Jesus was Nicodemus’ intrigue with the power and authority of Jesus’ life. Quite evident to the Lord was the man’s hunger for the same meat of meaning and victory in his own experience that he discerned in Jesus.
Have you had a “new birth?” Whatever Nicodemus thought he knew about the kingdom and the things of God, he hadn’t caught on to this basic and yet essential truth. Whatever good things Nicodemus had accomplished in the name of God for the sake of religion or even for the benefit of other people, he had nothing if he did not have this one thing.
Jesus looks on this tortured teacher and tenderly tells him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." What a tragedy then if you or I were to choose to continue to live our lives based on religious exercise instead of being “birthed” into relationship with Him! What loss and powerlessness is our doom if we never come to personally know the power and hope of the kingdom of God!
Let it not be so for you and for me! “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:14-18 ESV).
As Jesus proclaims what is ultimately our only hope for life and meaning, let us look upon this One Who was “lifted up, believing in Him that we may receive the gift of eternal life!” And as we are then “born again”, let us know that we have been gloriously made new! “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV).
Through the grace of God, we may put behind us the wretched and selfish persons we once were (no matter how cleverly we hid our wretchedness behind airs of self-confidence and good works) and become fully the new creations that God is making of us, enjoying the journey of relationship with Him through Christ.
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to My chosen people, the people whom I formed for Myself that they might declare My praise” (Isaiah 43:18-21 ESV).
Once we allow the change of God to enter into us through a new birth, we can then allow that transformative power enter into our relationships, homes, workplaces, and culture to affect an enduring kind of change that carries us beyond the short-lived moments of our lives on earth into an eternity with God!
Copyright © Thom Mollohan.
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Thom, how wonderful for Nicodemus that he experienced this new birth before it was too late. At the cruxifixion and, I believe, during the undercover "trial" of Jesus, he and Joseph of Arimethia and possibly others began to align themselves with the One Who is True Righteousness. Years ago, Paul Harvey, in his "and now, the rest of the story" raised the questions: How many of us would be turned in by our co-workers or our neighbors if it became a crime for us to be a Christian? How many of us would be left to carry on as usual? Hisservant, Bobbi
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