No 3 May 25, 2021: What God has done for he has made real change possible

Continuing our searching out the importance of change from the first reflection, we further understand that God has given us the opportunity and the ability and power to really change our life: our heart, mind, spirit, and body. He has established through his Son the way of grace and the way to receive grace which will provide the foundations for real change. What a wonderful word change is. Yet, it is also a very fearful word for change can be for the worse as well as for the better. And our nature has a very strong tendency to maintain the status quo, to maintain what we have already achieved. Our feelings and our thoughts may embrace positive change but our concerns about negative change are often working in our mind at the same time, with the result we opt for maintaining as we are.
Our God clearly sees our need for change, even if we do not, for he sees that we are far from what he originally created us to be like and to achieve in our life. He also sees us as separate from him since our behavior and heart are rebellious against God which results in conditions for our great loss: living the best possible life and living eternally with God. We face a dilemma knowing God seeks and wishes to work on our heart and mind and actions in new ways for us but we are either not willing to see changes God has for us or we see that embracing his opportunity for change requires too much from us. We may also misunderstand the types of changes God desires for us, thinking he will turn us into preachers or send us to far away countries or that we will need a new job. On the other hand, we know his change for us would be for the better, a fact we know to be true since he is our maker. Still, we do not like to entertain his claim on our life, preferring our own life.
God however still seeks us and as Jesus says he knocks at our door and he wants to come into our life, for he has the words of life and the path to eternal life for us. He knocks on our hearts in many ways as he provides us with insights into his love and grace for us. We unfortunately see how far short we are in our character; and we think it impossible to live up to God’s love for us. Further, we see our own lack of goodness and righteousness and love for him and for our fellow humans. But God continues to knock and if we open just slightly, we will see God in all his grace and love for us and his desire for us. He is ready to make possible the changes needed in our life.
If we will but see our need for grace and for our repenting of our wrong actions and our lack of heart to love all people, then we will see how misguided we have been all along in our life pathway. We will now see he offers us forgiveness and he will direct us to into making decisions to embrace his change for our life. He then brings to our heart and mind that we must abandon our old way of living and embrace a new life of change, a change in our whole heart, mind, and action. All of this change is a spiritual change that comes together as we express in the physical action of baptism that we accept and believe God’s grace and love and his new life is good for us (Romans 6: 1 – 14).
We now have eternal life in our sites which gives us the conditions and the ability of not fearing the loss of our old self and our old ways. Now we are not afraid of change but embrace God in our life resulting in the most truly wonderful new way of living. Only in accepting God acting do we find this great liberating possibility of having a greatly improved new life.