By now the idea of New Year’s resolutions may be at the back of your mind. The goal of a new diet, exercise regime, or attitude towards life may have been lost as you’ve returned to the usual routine. The idea of a complete and lasting change in our lives can be a difficult one to commit to if we are doing it by ourselves.
But the miracle of salvation is that this everlasting change that happens when we accept the Lord Jesus as our Lord and Saviour is not from us, it’s from God. The Bible sums this up as:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.1
All the old nature that longed after sin has been put to death with Christ on the cross, and now we are a completely new creation with a new nature. This is a change we could never work for or maintain by ourselves but is done through the power and the love of God. God in his love wanted to bring us into a relationship with him that we may know the blessings of being in his family, free from sin and delighting in him.
This new creation is a complete and permanent change that transforms every part of our lives. With this new life we are given the message of good news to share with everyone we come into contact with. We are to be God’s ambassadors, sign posts that point those we come into contact with to God. For when we’ve received such amazing news ourselves it’s unimaginable not to want to share this awesome message with those we know and love.
Every Christian is unique and different, but in their lives they should display characteristics of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These, referred to as the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), are markers of a new life in Christ, and all should be visible to one degree or another, but being all different we’ll each struggle with different areas and some will grow faster in one than in others. This change, unlike a New Year’s resolution, is not done through our hard work but through the mystery of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. This continuous process of transformation will attract the attention of those in the world around us that have yet to meet with the Lord Jesus themselves. The attributes listed mark us out at citizens of Heaven touched by something completely divine, as those still in the world see in us the love, joy and hope that they themselves are scrambling to find.
So let your light shine for the world around you to see (Matt 5:16), so that your life could be read by others and that they would see the miracle God has worked in your life. How he has completely renovated the brokenness and replaced it with something they not only need but will want too!
May The Lord God bless you this year and I pray that you would grow and shine for him.
1. 2 Corinthians 5:17-19, ESV.
