Wednesday, April 3
The fact is that human beings are, often, creatures of habit. And we do, indeed, get set in our ways, and the older we get, the harder it is to change those ways. Indeed, we don’t change easily. How many wives have complained over the years, “I’ve tried to change my husband, but … ”? However, God is in the business of changing us, if not so much our personalities but, certainly, our characters. That’s so much of what the plan of salvation is about: God making us into new people in Him.
What great change happened to Saul of Tarsus, and how did it happen? Acts 8:1, 3; 9:1-22; Galatians 1:15-17.
“As Saul yielded himself fully to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, he saw the mistakes of his life and recognized the far-reaching claims of the law of God. He who had been a proud Pharisee, confident that he was justified by his good works, now bowed before God with the humility and simplicity of a little child, confessing his own unworthiness and pleading the merits of a crucified and risen Saviour. Saul longed to come into full harmony and communion with the Father and the Son; and in the intensity of his desire for pardon and acceptance he offered up fervent supplications …
The prayers of the penitent Pharisee were not in vain. The inmost thoughts and emotions of his heart were transformed by divine grace; and his nobler faculties were brought into harmony with the eternal purposes of God. Christ and His righteousness became to Saul more than the whole world”. – Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 119, 120.
Even if our own conversion stories are nowhere near as dramatic as Saul’s, we should all have our story, an experience of how the Lord has worked in our lives to change us, to make us into the kind of person we know we should be. Yes, the process can be long, and at times it’s easy to wonder if we are ever going to change. At times like these, two Bible texts are so crucial to meditate on and to claim for oneself.
Read Philippians 1:6 and Romans 8:1. What two great promises are found in those texts, and how do they fit together in the experience of a Christian?
