My Devotion My Heart

January 22, 2019

My Devotion

My Heart

Transformed

Teresa Jenkins

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2Corinthians 5:17

Transform: verb, make a thorough or dramatic change in the form, appearance or character.

Being created in the womb is like the born again transformation.  The seed entered the egg, for nine months a tiny embryo transforms into a baby, what started out unnoticeable and for weeks sometimes longer no one noticed.  Then at the appointed time the baby is born, and transformation continues.  We don’t reenter our mother’s womb, but we do go through growing pains.  If anyone accepts Christ, he/she is a new creation. 

It took me years to stop expecting the new creation of me to be like God creating the world in six days.  It’s a slow work in progress and sometimes it hurts like pulling a tooth without sedation.  I don’t know about you, but I avoid pain if at all possible which results in frustration when I don’t at all feel like a new creation at all sometimes. 

Transformation takes time, it takes change, and it takes work.  The old person has gone, no longer lost and is a new creation in Christ, but old habits, thoughts, and feelings are hard to get rid of.  They are weaved in like needlepoint threads crossing each other so intricately they knot together making it impossible to take out.  I’ve created a few needlepoint projects and no matter how careful you are when you mess up, but don’t notice it until a few rows later, you might as well get out the scissors and cut out all the thread until you get to the error you made.  No salvaging all that thread to use again, and the chance that the thread store has the exact same color you started with aren’t very good.

The new has come!  Now what? Work.  We stop the process of God’s work in us all the time. The way we think, behave, speak, everything about us has deep roots of a lifetime of doing nothing, like a beautiful garden gets swallows up in weeds, vines, and ugliness when it’s not cared for over a long period of time. 

I wonder if that is why God called His people of the Old Testament, stiff-necked. God took care of them at every turn, but so many times His plan had to wait for them because they didn’t like the new way, they wanted what they complained about for generations in Egypt.  How could they?  God’s way was much better.  We are just like them.  They didn’t understand what God was doing, where they were going, or what He had promised them even looked like.  Neither do we, that’s the reason, we live by faith not by sight.  Some of what is to come won’t be easy and if we knew what that was, would we follow?

Transformation is hard work, in order to be who God created us to be requires us to abandon what we know, how we were before Christ and become like Him in every way possible.  That means self has to be crucified.  Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Galatians 5:24

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Galatians 2:20

So now, the work to stop with the old and live in the new…Be transformed.  It’s all in the mind, changing the way we think, get rid of the thoughts that play on automatic replay, a total cleaning of old thoughts and habits and embracing the new, the mind of Christ. Jesus did His part He died on the cross, was resurrected, and reigns at the right hand of the Father.  Romans 12:2 is all about what we must do to crucify self every day.  It won’t be easy, but all things are possible now to those who believe.

The pattern of this world is all about self, the total opposite of Christ who gave Himself for all, and now that we have accepted Him, not only are we His, but His power resides in us and we have no excuse not to be transformed.  Change the way you think, it changes the way you are, the way you live, and the less of you and the more of Christ comes through.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.  Romans 12:2

In HIS Time

Teresa