Monday, August 1, 2011
True Conversion
“And when people escape from the wicked ways of the world by learning about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up with sin and become its slave again, they are worse off than before.” (2 Peter 2:20)
Sometimes we hear about well-known people who claim to have made a commitment to Jesus Christ. Often, it is around election time. When they address Christians, they speak of their great faith in God. After the elections, we seldom hear about it again.
Then there are people who say they are believers, but a month or two later, they go back to their old ways again. They say, “I tried Christianity, but it didn't work for me.” But in reality, they never really found Christ.
Others will turn to God when they hit hard times. Awhile later, you see them going back to their old ways, and you wonder what happened. I would suggest that many of these people never were converted at all. They went through the motions, but Jesus Christ never became a part of their lives. Often, they end up worse than before.
When Jesus Christ truly comes into our lives, He takes up residence. And He doesn’t just do a basic housecleaning; He does a thorough one. There is real change. But when a house has only been swept, that is, when someone has made only moral changes, he or she is still vulnerable to the enemy. This is why we must recognize the futility of simply turning over a new leaf or making a few new resolutions. We must realize the problem is deeper than our moral sins. We must get to the heart of the matter and have Jesus Christ take residence in our lives and change us from the inside out.
Summary sentence: True conversion is a matter of the heart and not just turning over a new leaf.
Copyright © 2011 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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