New Life Transformation is a Gift we Must Take Part in

Apr 21, 2021    Austin Andrews

Our new life is a gift from God.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ
merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!17 This means that anyone who
belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has
given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to
himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of
reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak
for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the
offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
Transformation is a process

A little more than 12 years ago, I led a group of workers to Arizona to help my Dad at his small
church. It had a parsonage that needed a whole lot of work. We traveled on a Thursday, worked
Friday and Saturday, had service with them on Sunday before returning to California. We didn’t
completely transform that parsonage, but we tore out all the carpet, renovated a bathroom,
painted the entire house, and ran new ducting for the air conditioning unit. When we left that little
home was clean, and ready for the next steps.

Transforming that parsonage was a process.

One of the things we all must realize is that transformation is a process. When we ask Christ in
our lives and accept him as our Lord, we exchange the old life for a new one. We exchange
bondage for freedom, fear for love, bitterness for forgiveness, and death for life.

Once we surrender ourselves, the Holy Spirit arrives to dwell in us. From that moment forward
we are being transformed, and transformation takes time. Our transformation is slow and steady
and the poor choices of the past continue to haunt us. The tragedies of life continue to raise their
ugly heads in our new lives like nightmares from the past but through the healing of the Holy
Spirit we continue to transform. Our past circumstances and choices have no power over us.

Transformation is not easily embraced and achieved.

Triple D: How hard has your transformation been? And while we all realize that part of
Fit.Church is for us to transform from an unhealthy life to a healthy one, but have you considered
that this journey is much broader and that our transformation in Christ includes our physical
health, it is not limited to our physical health? How can you embrace total transformation in a
greater way?