A New Beginning
In a recent issue of The Intercessor was an article entitled My Pearl of Great Price” by Shay Trethewey. If, like me, you read that article and thought (gulp): “My pearl of great price is or was something other than Jesus Christ or what He has done for me,” then read on because this is written for you.
You don’t hear much these days about people worshipping idols. When I think about an idol, I think of the golden calf in the Bible that the rebellious Israelites made and worshipped while Moses was away.
However, an idol is really anything that occupies that main place in your heart and is the central aspect of your life that you think about and care about. Whatever your idol is, you use it to try and complete you and fill your life.
An idol could be your job, your house, your money, your relationship, even your “SELF.” It is really anything that comes between you and God. The thing that is most precious to you in the world.
We all have a God sized hole in our life that only God can fill and satisfy. When we try to use these other outer things to fill us, not only is it impossible but it actually destroys our life.
Some form of unbelief is really at the root of all idols we may have in our life because when we believe I am a “just me” and I need/want “X” in my life, we let Satan take control and live out through our members. “And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:13). “For the wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23).
By trying to fill our lives with what we think we want, we actually bring destruction on ourselves and destroy relationships with others in our life. Only Jesus Christ can fill the hole in our life and when we allow Him to occupy His rightful place in our heart as Lord and Saviour, then we are truly complete.
For me, there came a point when I was ready to admit that my life was not working and that despite the illusion that I had the thing I most wanted, in reality I was miserable and life was a drudge (for it was not really life but death). So when we reach that point, what do we do?
Of course, we must tell another human being what we have done (confess our sin, one to another). This can seem a scary thing to do and Satan will try to convince us that we “must not tell anybody THAT” in order to keep us captive and subject to his lies.
In my case, when I started to face up to how I was living, I earnestly cried out to the Lord for help and He did the rest. However, honesty was vital in order to shed Satan from my “members” and finally emerge from the nightmare into the light.
This transformation is an amazing miracle by which we are really raised from the dead. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Once we have confessed and repented of our sin, we can claim this scripture as true for ourselves. God showed me a picture of myself like a plant in the ground which appeared to have died completely. All that remained of that plant was a dried up, blackened twig. Then miraculously out of nowhere came brand new shoots out of the ground and a totally new plant sprang up. This new plant grew up and put forth buds ready to bloom with the fruits of a new creation. This is a representation of the fruit Christ can produce through us when He is living freely in us, as us.
That Amazing Grace became reality to me as I came to know “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
The good news is that our old way of life was not an independent “me” living, but was perpetrated by Satan and he carried out his desires and purposes through us. When Christ is in charge He lives out His purpose in us which is love for others, in place of the self-love Satan lived out.
Christ living in us is all about loving and taking care of the needs of others, but God has made us so that having Christ at our centre and Lord over everything else in life is the only way we can be truly satisfied ourselves and have real joy, peace, love and all of the promises of God are fulfilled. Praise God!
