Based on 2nd Corinthians 5:11-21
As many of you may know, I spent the first 46 years of my life, in one of the most liberal Protestant denominations in America. Throughout my time at this church, which I grew up in, I always felt God calling me in one way or another, faintly and loudly. I even worked for the church for a number of years until it became an impossible place. It became an impossible place for several reasons, one of them being that the church is not a Biblically oriented or a Jesus focused church. Because of this, profound questions were raised in my spiritual heart. My work at the church focused on Sunday School curriculum and programming and thus, I was continuously delving into the Bible. When I did, I would read things that would raise questions for me such as: "why are these verses, or statements by Christ never addressed in this church? Why has this or that not been taught? How come they seem to ignore this part of the Bible?" etc.
Eventually, through the work of the evil one, a crisis of large proportions developed in the church, which caused me to resign from my position and also to leave the church. God was leading me out of this place and revealing to me that there was something important missing in my current place of worship.
But there was more to it. During this time as I remained in the church until the school year was completed, God began a revelation process that was extraordinary. Each day it seemed like God sent me a new enlightenment concerning what was not present in that denomination that I had grown up in, and a new revelation about the truth of Christ. I felt like I was watching a movie.
At the time, I was so unfamiliar with some aspects of the Bible, that it was not until I came to Bethesda that I read about the scales falling off of Apostle Paul's eyes in the book of Acts as he began to see what God and Christ had in store for him, and the transformation that he was to go through. What I did not realize was that I went through something like this in a very small way (I do not pretend to think that my experience was close to Paul's). I likened it to shear curtains being drawn back each day, so that the light of the truth was revealed. This was an incredible and exhilarating experience. Although, I did not look different, I felt something I had never experienced as the Holy Spirit was working on me daily. I was being changed. I could not even put a name to this, because I was so ignorant of such things.
All of this appeared to be the will of God who had completely turned my life upside down in terms of employment and a lifelong church affiliation, to seek a new place of worship and essentially a riveting faith. Deliberately, our family went looking for a church that was very different from where we had been. Bethesda was the place we chose.
As we began attending, I heard so many things that I had never encountered before about God and Christ. I heard about Christian faith in a different way. We were exposed to ideas, such as: having a 'personal relationship with Jesus Christ'; that one could be saved, that there really was such a thing as 'being born again' and "getting right with God." These concepts were not taught where we had come from. In some instances, I had heard these ideas actually mocked. My former church addressed being "born again", as some silliness that evangelicals and the new mega-churches were all about. With smugness, it declared that no one is need that sort of thing, because if one had been baptized, it was presumed you were good to go.
Therefore, as I have been reading 2nd Corinthians, several passages remind me so much about the many things that I came to understand about the situation we came out of. Much of 2nd Corinthians really exposes the differences between churches that are Biblically based and focused on Christ, as opposed to those who have a world view which tries to justify secular values.
As I read this portion of 2 Corinthians, it was quite clear that Paul was talking about the very things I discovered, when he says: "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 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. 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. So we are Christ's ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, "Come back to God!" 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." 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
In this one paragraph, an important, life changing message is delivered. God was seeking reconciliation with us through Christ's death and resurrection and not punishment of our sinfulness. If we follow Jesus we are, indeed, a new creation and our old life, however, troubling, is forever lost! This was a gift from God making Jesus the offering for our sins. And it was all done so that we would understand that God was establishing a personal faith with each of us through His son. It was done so that we might turn away from a corrupt, fallen world, full of sin and darkness, evil and deceit, and choose to be "right with God."
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment