Results of True Change

Results of True Change

6/13/16

It is a well known fact that God will change our lives if we allow Him to enter.  There is no way possible that God has entered into our hearts without there being any visible change because it will be evident through our words and actions.  A person cannot claim to have God in their lives and not have some visible change present, for God cannot inhabit a place where darkness resides.  How can the Church be silent on this issue?  Has she lost the ability to discern what is right and what is wrong?  The Bible contains testament after testament of healings and changes that Jesus did for those who believed in Him, so I guess the answer lies in the fact that the Church has lost her edge in recognizing Kingdom.  God knows this and is calling for her to stand up and be accounted for once again for His Kingdom and its advancement.

This article is going to be simple and straight to the point with no beating around the bush.  The Church has lost her edge when it comes to the spreading the true gospel of Christ and while her leaders shall argue this point their words speak a lot louder than her actions, ones which they cannot deny.  The sad point to this is that while they are arguing their points they cannot adequately define God’s Word according to their words which coincide with their actions and give definition to the world and its leader.

God has provided us with a previous article concerning hope and change and how these items cannot be complete unless He is at the center of both conditions.  When mankind allows God to steal her / his show one cannot help but have a miraculous inner change that cannot be hidden, nor does the person wish to hide this change.  Being complacent with the old state means that there has been no change and nothing has developed inside that person to warrant such language.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is summed up many times throughout the Bible, but the scripture that God wants us to understand here comes from John Chapter 9.  This is another well-known passage from the Bible and one that I have heard preached and taught over my 48 years on this planet but it is one that has a huge Kingdom concept within its words which has not been readily taught as the foundation of the true Gospel.  The first verse of this chapter says it all and it describes how one man is blind from birth and in the second verse corresponds to the human being blind of their own liking through the words of Jesus’ own disciples, and it is this point that God wants us to understand about His Kingdom and how we blindly bear false witness against Him.  Verse three sums up God’s Kingdom advancement process with verse nine beginning the results of such truth and advancement.  There are many points to this passage but it is the point of the one healed that is the important portion here.

This passage clearly states that people are born with deformities and ailments that they do not wish to harbor, but through the process of sin inherit as a property of such disobedience a long time ago.  But what God wishes for us to understand begins with verse two when the disciples, Jesus’ own companions, ask about the origins of the man’s loss of sight.  Did they not understand exactly what was going on and how things came about due to the sin that mankind created for our lives back in the Garden of Eden?  And how different is Christ’s Church today in which they cannot recognize this same sinful inheritance today?  I am glad that they asked this question because it gave Jesus a chance to explain the Kingdom of God to them and exactly who inhabits this Kingdom. 

While Jesus healed this man of his inherited blindness it needs to be clear that the emphasis should not be placed on the act but the obedience to what Jesus said to do, which reinforces the Old Testament laws that God set into motion concerning His people.  When Jesus spat in the dirt and then covered the man’s eyes with the dirt, the man had one of two choices to make.  He could have reacted violently and immediately rubbed off the mud and then asked what right Jesus had to do that – sound familiar?  Or, he could have listened to Jesus and obeyed what He said for him to do – which the man did.  It is also interesting that the man knew exactly what to do and where to go after Jesus gave His instructions, another sign that God works through the resources of mankind to advance His Kingdom.

The man immediately did what Jesus told him to do and it was this act of obedience that allowed God to fulfill the desire of the man’s wish and the act of change that Jesus did in his life.  This act is a great miracle of Jesus and through the obedience of the man God’s Kingdom advanced and then expanded through the physical and verbal testimony of the man after the fact.  It is evident that the man was known well enough that his neighbors knew that he had been blind from birth and after the miracle that Jesus did for him, these neighbors knew that the man could now see.

The neighbors then asked what had occurred that he could see and it was an immediate response from the man that solidified the advancement of God’s Kingdom and gives us an example of how God’s Kingdom should operate.  ANY testimony of healing is a sign of restoration and is the reason why God gave us His Word to understand.  ANY testimony of this type of change from the world’ grip to a true freedom in God is another prime example of what God’s Kingdom stands for.  ANY process which takes a person from the confines of this world and places them into a godly state represents Satan’s worst nightmare because that person now understands what held them captive for that period of time in their life.  This changed status of the person also poses a greater threat to Satan’s establishment and therefore a push backwards on his kingdom.  It is this change in our lives that Satan deems to keep from us and is the sole reason why he is out to wipe us off the face of the earth as quick as possible.

There cannot be any question that the act that Jesus did in this passage was a miracle of God and represented a healing from the Hand of God.  There is also no question that healing is a part of the restoration process and plays an important AND vital part in God’s Kingdom but many times we have asked for God’s healing in our lives and once that healing has been received we have kept our restoration silent.  While the Kingdom has advanced in our lives we have failed to further God’s life into others, so we have limited God which if one really wishes to be honest, is exactly what Christians are doing who have been saved yet sit in their pews and do nothing else but wait for Jesus to return.

The power of the Word comes from our mouths and actions and if we demonstrate the kind of response that the blind man had in John Chapter 9 there would be no stopping God from gaining tremendous ground without cessation over a dying world.  It is this specific message of the Gospel that our enemy truly hates – through the original definition of this word – and one that represents everything that God has wanted His prized creations to understand.  God is love and He is all about healing, repentance, and restoration but unless we obey His commands we can never see the true results of this glorious miracle.

Church, this is a prime example of how important obedience to God really is to our lives.  Each day we turn on our information boxes and see that someone has once again taken matters into their own hands to advance their own agenda.  This is not what God wants for our lives and yet we embrace its owner as the answer for all our needs while crying over the woes that we have in truth promoted.  Church, your mission is clearly defined and adequately provided for and it is our responsibility to teach a dying world that there is an ultimate Savior that loves us and wishes nothing but our eternal blessedness at all times. 

But if the Church does not regain the knowledge that she is a warring instrument for our eternal status, our effectiveness will flicker out and represent nothing.  God’s Word cannot return void which is exactly the opposite of what we are doing if we are not out verbally proclaiming of what He has done in our lives to the world.  As the song from Hillsong ministries states, Creation itself hangs on the very words that God has spoken, why can’t we be doing and proclaiming the same?  Because if we do, we shall see the complete results of the changes that God performs in our lives and shall be eager to mention this Work in our lives.

DLB