GOD SEEKS WHOLSALE CHANGE
IN OUR LIVES
He's not interested in tinkering at the margins.
By Doug Brown
Lead Pastor
God’s not interested in tinkering at the margins. When it comes to our lives, He wants to change us from the inside out.
Before we came to Christ, we were ruined by sin. Every aspect of our being – spirit, soul and body – had been corrupted by rebellion to God and His law. The Psalmist says, “I was a beast before You” (Psalm 73:22). The Scriptures also compare the human race to numerous animals, including wild dogs (Phil. 3:2), cunning foxes (Luke 13:32) and wolves (Matthew 10:16). These representations describe the condition of our hearts toward God and each other before we came to know Christ.
But Christ reached out to us to redeem us (purchase us) in order to reconcile (restore) us to God. It is through the cross and the blood of the Lamb that He purchased us and paid in full the penalty of our moral crimes before the holy God. We lack the ability and resources to reconcile ourselves to the Righteous Judge of all the earth. It is only through Christ that we can be reconciled. There simply is no other way.
But many Christ-followers stop here. We think that this is all there is to Christianity. But we could not be more wrong. God is certainly interested in redeeming us, but He is also passionate about renovating us. He not only wants to take us to Heaven, but to make us fit for Heaven. Because of this, the Lord will allow us to go through trials and suffering in order to renovate our inner person. The Holy Spirit who dwells within us is the transformer of our hearts. One of the primary works of the Holy Spirit is to make us holy.
To seek holiness is not a religious duty, but the logical result of having a loving relationship with God, who has reconciled us. The work of the Holy Spirit is to take our ruined hearts and renovate, renew and transform them. The Holy Spirit does this work of transformation as we cooperate with Him. We can’t change ourselves, just as a leopard can’t change its spots. But we can and must cooperate with what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives. We can either cooperate with the Spirit and experience the development of the fruit of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22) or we can resist and quench the Spirit.
God desires not only to redeem you, but to renovate you with the purpose of restoring you. He works night and day to draw men and women to Himself and to restore the glory that was lost at the fall of man. The Lord will restore the glory that once was mankind’s in his state of innocence. But He doesn’t stop there. The Lord actually takes us into a deeper glory so that every true believer will be so transformed that we will attain the very glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14)! Now that’s what I call radical character formation!
Here is it is in a nutshell: God takes our ruined hearts and redeems us so that we become His. Now that we are His, the Holy Spirit goes to work to renovate our hearts in order to restore the glory that was lost. The glory that is restored is actually a deeper glory than that of mere innocence: It’s that of Jesus Christ. This is real and radical holiness.
We have a choice today. Will we cooperate with the Holy Spirit by yielding to Him? Or will we resist and quench Him by that “wild dog” tendency which dwells in us?
Resources from Lead Pastor Doug Brown are here to encourage you in your faith journey.