Heart Change

 As Christians, we know that all things were created for God’s glory, including us. Yet it’s another truth that we often overlook. Sometimes it seems like we almost get into the mindset that the World was just accidentally created, and we just wound up here. We forget that from the day that the World was created, it was for the glory of God. From the moment God put man on this Earth, we were created for the glory of God, and most exceptionally when Jesus Christ died on the cross for sinners who deserve nothing less than the full wrath of God, yet were given life, it was for the glory of God.

“It is my life’s thesis that outside of Jesus Christ there is existence, but there is no such thing as life” Matt Chandler.

Before I came to Christ, I spent a lot of time doing things to earn God’s love. I loved and boasted my own accomplishments and abilities because I thought that that was the only way God would love me. I believed in God, but never felt like He believed in me. I spent my time wondering why though I tried to please God, I was never satisfied. I thought that He gave joy to people and wondered why I wasn’t happy. Finally I became so run down that I just felt like giving up. I was miserable and alone. I became a Christian when I said to God, “I give up, and I can’t do this on my own.”  That is where God stepped in and gave me a new life, and I realized that He doesn’t give joy to people, He is joy. 

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

After that revelation, I had what can only be described as a change in heart. Instead of doing things because they were the right thing to do, I began doing things for the glory of God because it was the only thing I could do.  I began to act out of love instead of obligation. He had given me a new life and in this life Christ lives in me and I in Him, and it became my disposition to love and serve him who has given us everything. Suddenly I was not doing things to earn God’s love I was doing them because I love God. I don’t pray because I am supposed to, I pray because I yearn to be in the presence of God and to have a deeper relationship with Him. I talk about the power of the Gospel to the people I love, knowing many of them will be offended and that it will possibly create distance in our friendship, but I do it because I love them and want them to know the joy that I know.

Knowing the love that God has for His people has made all the difference. It brings joy on the darkest of days, and makes the suffering of this life bearable as I gaze into the future of what is to come knowing nothing on this earth can separate me from the love of God. I can stumble and falter and utterly fail, and there will be nothing that I do that God cannot say, “I paid for that.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8: 37-39