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A Change of Heart
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Galatians 1:23 … they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.
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Download audio fileFreedom is a tricky thing. So often, we’re our own worst enemies. Our perspective, our thoughts, our behaviour, rob us of this elusive thing called … freedom. Try as we might, we just can’t grasp it.
You’ve had that experience, right? You know what it’s like. There’s something in your makeup, an Achilles heal if you will, that is constantly your undoing. For each one of us, it’s something different. But at the end of the day, it trips you up again and again and again.
Mine is perfectionism, which has a tendency to fuel anger. Yours, well, you probably know what it is. Insecurity, gossiping, a lack of compassion, selfishness … the list runs as long as my arm, and then some.
God has a simple name for it. He calls it sin. The devil loves to rub your nose in it, and just when you’re feeling weak or tired, emotionally spent … he pushes your button and there you go again.
For the Apostle Paul, it was an obsessive hatred of the church. He of course was a Pharisee in the Jewish religion, when Jesus came along and turned everything he’d believed in, everything he’d worked so hard for, completely upside down. No wonder he hated the Christians.
But then … then he met Jesus and something changed in him. People were talking about it …
Galatians 1:23 … they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.
And he had been too. He was a terrible persecutor of the church … until that day he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. You can read about it in the book of Acts Chapter 9.
Okay so he met Jesus … but what happened to turn him from a man breathing threats against the early church, to the guy who ultimately wrote almost half the books of the New Testament? That’s quite a turn around you have to admit.
I’ll tell you what happened. Jesus changed his heart. You know and I know that when we have a change of heart, our thoughts and actions flow out of that.
Just as God promised in the days of old:
Ezekiel 11:19-20: I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them.
When you encounter Jesus on your road, when you draw close to Him, when His Spirit fills you to overflowing – He does what you were powerless to do.
He changes your heart, which as it turns out, changes everything.
That’s God’s Word.
Fresh … for you … today.
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