God predestined us to grow into His likeness, but this doesn’t happen at the moment we are saved. While we are redeemed by the Savior’s precious blood and immediately have a new heart, our transformation is a lifelong process.

The Holy Spirit enables this journey. Growth is impossible without Him, regardless of our efforts. Yet we can welcome or hinder His transforming hand.

One way we give God willing access to our lives is by obeying this mandate in Romans 12:2: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

Everyone chooses either a biblical or worldly philosophy as his or her source of truth–and that choice shapes the mind and spirit. Therefore, the Lord tells us to immerse our mind in Scripture, allowing Him to mold us into His beautiful image.

The Bible story about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness illustrates this principle. After saving them from Pharaoh’s abuse, God did not bring them immediately to the Promised Land. The Lord knew doing so would bring sinful ways with them. Instead, He led them to the wilderness and gave the Ten Commandments. Only after they learned to obey and turn to almighty God were they ready for the next step.

The process of sanctification isn’t always pleasant. In fact, it’s often painful for us, just as it was for the Israelites. In God’s amazing wisdom and love, however, He knows what we need to leave our old ways that lead to death. And He builds new character in us–full of life and joy.

 There is a vacuum at the heart of our culture. As Saul Bellow argued in his 1976 Noble Laureate lecture, “The intelligent public is waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, and social theory and what it cannot hear from pure science: a broader, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. If writers do not come into the center, it will not be because the center is pre-empted; it is not.” Very simply stated, there is no center to hold things together. Or to put it differently, there is no over-arching story to life by which all the particulars can be interpreted. The pursuit of knowledge without knowing who we are or why we exist, combined with a war on our imaginations by our entertainment industry, leaves us at the mercy of power with no morality. May I illustrate this?

 On many different occasions while driving and listening to music, every now and then a piece comes on that I find either unmusical or jarring. I usually shut the radio off. But then one day I was taken to see a play called The Phantom of the Opera. Suddenly I realized that some of the music I had not quite enjoyed was from this play. I was amazed at the difference knowing the story made, whenever I heard the music subsequently. In fact the music in some portions is utterly magnificent. The love songs, the discourses, yes, even the arguments made sense when you know the story. Life needs a story for one to understand the details. Life needs to hold together at the center if we are to reach to distant horizons. But our culture owns neither a story, nor holds at the center.

 If such is the reality of our culture, where does that leave us? The challenge, as I see it, is this: How do you connect with a generation that hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings? 

 Ironically, postmodernism may be one of the most opportune thought patterns because it has cleared the playing field.  All disciplines have lost their “final authority.” The hopes that modernity had brought, the triumph of “Reason” and “Science,” which many thought would bring the utopia, have failed in almost every respect. With all of our material gains, there is still a hunger for the spiritual. In virtually every part of the world, students linger long after every session to talk and plead for answers to their barren lives. All the education one gets does not diminish that search for inner coherence and a storyline for one’s own life.  

 As much as postmodernism can confuse language and definitions, there is a yearning that the postmodernist’s cavalier attitude does not weaken. Moreover, there is indeed a story and one who stands at the center who answers this yearning. Only in the gospel message that culminates in worship is there coherence—which in turn brings coherence within the community of believers, where both individuality and community are affirmed. The worship of the living God is what ultimately binds the various inclinations of the heart and gives them focus. A worshipping community in spirit and in truth binds the diversity of our culture, the diversity of our education, the diversity of our backgrounds, and brings us together into a corporate expression of worship.  

 With all that the cultural terrain presents to us, the injunction that “to find one’s self, one must lose one’s self,” contains a truth any seeker of self-fulfillment needs to grasp. Apart from the cross of Jesus Christ, I know of no other hope. The songwriter said it simply: We’ve a story to tell to the nations. The last stanza of that great hymn says:

 We’ve a Savior to show to the nations
Who the path of sorrow hath trod,
That all of the world’s great peoples
Might come to the truth of God.
For the darkness shall turn to dawning,
And the dawning to noon-day bright,
And Christ’s great kingdom shall come to earth,
The kingdom of love and light.

 Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Morning   “Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of

evil.”  Proverbs 1:33

 Divine love is rendered conspicuous when it shines in the midst of judgments.

Fair is that lone star which smiles through the rifts of the thunder clouds;

bright is the oasis which blooms in the wilderness of sand; so fair and so

bright is love in the midst of wrath. When the Israelites provoked the Most High

by their continued idolatry, he punished them by withholding both dew and rain,

so that their land was visited by a sore famine; but while he did this, he took

care that his own chosen ones should be secure. If all other brooks are dry, yet

shall there be one reserved for Elijah; and when that fails, God shall still

preserve for him a place of sustenance; nay, not only so, the Lord had

 not simply one “Elijah,” but he had a remnant according to the election of

grace, who were hidden by fifties in a cave, and though the whole land was

subject to famine, yet these fifties in the cave were fed, and fed from Ahab’s

table too by His faithful, God-fearing steward, Obadiah. Let us from this draw

the inference, that come what may, God’s people are safe. Let convulsions shake

the solid earth, let the skies themselves be rent in twain, yet amid the wreck

of worlds the believer shall be as secure as in the calmest hour of rest. If God

cannot save his people under heaven, he will save them in heaven. If the world

becomes too hot to hold them, then heaven shall be the place of their

 reception and their safety. Be ye then confident, when ye hear of wars, and

rumours of wars. Let no agitation distress you, but be quiet from fear of evil.

Whatsoever cometh upon the earth, you, beneath the broad wings of Jehovah, shall

be secure. Stay yourself upon his promise; rest in his faithfulness, and bid

defiance to the blackest future, for there is nothing in it direful for you.

Your sole concern should be to show forth to the world the blessedness of

hearkening to the voice of wisdom.

 

Evening   “How many are mine iniquities and sins?”  Job 13:23

 Have you ever really weighed and considered how great the sin of God’s people

is? Think how heinous is your own transgression, and you will find that not only

does a sin here and there tower up like an alp, but that your iniquities are

heaped upon each other, as in the old fable of the giants who piled Pelion upon

Ossa, mountain upon mountain. What an aggregate of sin there is in the life of

one of the most sanctified of God’s children! Attempt to multiply this, the sin

of one only, by the multitude of the redeemed, “a number which no man can

number,” and you will have some conception of the great mass of the guilt of the

people for whom Jesus shed his blood. But we arrive at a more

 adequate idea of the magnitude of sin by the greatness of the remedy provided.

It is the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s only and well-beloved Son. God’s Son!

Angels cast their crowns before him! All the choral symphonies of heaven

surround his glorious throne. “God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” And yet he

takes upon himself the form of a servant, and is scourged and pierced, bruised

and torn, and at last slain; since nothing but the blood of the incarnate Son of

God could make atonement for our offences. No human mind can adequately estimate

the infinite value of the divine sacrifice, for great as is the sin of God’s

people, the atonement which takes it away is immeasurably greater.

 Therefore, the believer, even when sin rolls like a black flood, and the

remembrance of the past is bitter, can yet stand before the blazing throne of

the great and holy God, and cry, “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that

died; yea rather, that hath risen again.” While the recollection of his sin

fills him with shame and sorrow, he at the same time makes it a foil to show the

brightness of mercy–guilt is the dark night in which the fair star of divine

love shines with serene splendour.

Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.   Isaiah 26:4 

 Seeing that we have such a God to trust, let us rest upon Him with all our weight; let us resolutely drive out all unbelief and endeavor to get rid of doubts and fears, which spoil our comfort, since there is no excuse for fear when God is the foundation of our trust. A loving parent would be sorely grieved if his child could not trust him; and how ungenerous, how unkind is our conduct when we put so little confidence in our heavenly Father, who has never failed us and who never will.

It would be good if doubting was banished from the household of God; but it is to be feared that old Unbelief is as nimble today as when the psalmist asked, “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?”1 David had not tested the mighty sword of the giant Goliath for long, and yet he said, “There is none like that.”2 He had tried it once in the hour of his youthful victory, and it had proved itself to be of the right metal, and therefore he praised it ever afterwards.

Even so should we speak well of our God; there is none like unto Him in the heaven above or the earth beneath. “To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?”3 There is no rock like the rock of Jacob, our enemies themselves being judges. So far from tolerating doubts to live in our hearts, we will take the whole detestable crew, as Elijah did the prophets of Baal, and slay them over the brook; and for a stream to kill them at, we will select the sacred torrent that flows from our Savior’s wounded side. We have been in many trials, but we have never yet been placed where we could not find in our God all that we needed. Let us then be encouraged to trust in the Lord forever, assured that His ever-lasting strength will be, as it has been, our deliverance and comfort.

1Psalm 77:7 21 Samuel 21:9 3Isaiah 46:5

Family Reading Plan   Jeremiah 1  Matthew 15