Weekly Devotional 4-28-14 How is it Possible
How is it that a person who is spiritually dead toward God (a term meaning separation from God to the extent that said person has no desire of true God and is alienated toward Him) begins to discover within him or herself such a desire? Is it not because God has purposed to overcome that separation? Certainly it is. Paul, in relaying God’s message to the Ephesians (and in extension, us) by wrote; “1And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. 4But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ… 8For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:1-5;8-9 NKJV ).
I am not sure anyone can accurately explain how God efficaciously calls a person out of spiritual darkness into the marvelous light of His Being. Yet He does. I believe Jesus explained it best when in a conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus He said; “3 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:3; 5-8 NKJ).
A God who could call a world into existence out of nothing certainly could (can) call a person out of spiritual darkness, but still, it makes us wonder just what happens when that transformation takes place. It is a spiritual matter, not a matter of just human intellect. In fact, Paul wrote about that in his first letter to the Corinthians. Consider; “11For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:11-14 NKJV ).
Oh, how thankful we should be that God has overpowered the spiritual darkness that possessed us at one time. Not only the spiritual darkness that possessed us but our love for the things that are of that darkness.
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Transforming Power; The Work of God on Behalf of Man