Forgiven AND Made New

Sometimes it is really hard for us to grasp both statements in this ‪‎MiracleChannel‬ graphic.

When we accept ‪Christ‬ we are ‪forgiven‬. Wow! That's huge!! Just think of all the stuff you have done in your life - the nasty, rotten, ugly garbage - to yourself and to others. That's one big pile of junk for most of us!! Yet ‪God‬ 

forgives us?! That alone shows just how BIG God really is!! It also shows how huge His love for us is!! 

I witnessed recently a mother who decided to blast her son with EVERYTHING he had ever done in his life! And he is a grown adult! So that's a LOT of stuff she decided to wipe his face in! And this was his mother!! Even she couldn't forgive him! 

I was very proud of him though as he processed her venom... He simply said it didn't matter because God ‪‎forgave‬ him and he knew that he was not the same person anymore as his mother described. Sadly she did not see the new person - she wanted to dwell on the old. That attack was totally from the enemy!! And it showed way more about HER than it did about him!!

But he understood that ‪‎Jesus‬ had made him new. And so often we can't fathom that either. We come to Christ and at that instant feel a twinge of 'different' in our hearts, yet our outside world remains the same. 

But we are made new in Christ. It does happen right away... We are given everything IN Christ that Jesus himself had. We are completely new. But through our outward perspective it often doesn't seem like that. We need to look at things through the lens of the ‪‎Cross‬ and see what God sees, then start walking in that.

That's what my friend did... When he received Christ, he had a thirst and a hunger to know more and the more he digs in to God's Word, the more he finds who he really is. 

You are not the pile of junk behind you... You are a new creation - whole, healthy, radiant, beautiful - you are a child of God - His most precious creation, created in His image!

Eph 2:10: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Gen 1:26-28: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

That's powerful stuff!! Let that sink in!! 

And then start walking it out.... Oh what a marvelous journey!!