I hear all the time from people statements like...
"I wish I didn't have to be this way anymore..."
"I want to be more like that person..."
Whatever it is, there is a deep, deep heart cry within people that wishes to be different. And that difference Paul understood... that difference, Jesus strongly understood. He not only understood it, he created the difference.
From when I was an infant until I was nineteen years old, I was dead. I didn't go to church as a child (much) and I really never heard the gospel throughout those days. My early teenage years was filled with disobedience and a sexually immoral lifestyle. Later I came to know of Christ and accepted him in to my life, but lived a carnal lifestyle (accepted Jesus as my Savior, but lived in the shadows of my past sin).
The Spirit created in me my new identity, which I have been living in for nearly four years. I was in Romania and was sick of struggling with sexually-immoral sin. I was sitting on a bench outside the church that I helped build, surrounded by the aroma and singing of Romanian farm life, and the everyday Romanian dialect that echoed for hundreds of feet, which consisted of children's voices and lost parents fighting about who knows what.
From that day forward, I was freed from my past sin. God partnered with the Holy Spirit to empower me to break free! Just as Paul writes in chapter three of Corinthians... "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of Lord is, there is freedom." The beauty of this verse is the context. Paul, in his extravagent wisdom, uses the illustration of the old convent (the law) and new covenant (santification from Jesus)....
"He has made us competent as ministers of a new convenant- not of the letter (aka. the law) but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
AHHH!!! Life is calling me so I'm going to end with this...
Life is hard. There is no promise that life will be easy when following Jesus. In fact, I believe there is more of a promise that life will be harder when following Jesus. But with the empowerment of the Spirit, life on earth becomes easier, more rewarding, and full of love. For Paul finishes chapter three of 2 Cor with...
"And we, who with unveiled faces ALL REFLECT the LORD'S GLORY, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (v.18)
As we follow Jesus, endure hardships with the glory of the Lord, we ALL reflect His glory to the world. We all have access to a new identity and that identity is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit's Glory.
