The Before and After of Faith

The Before and After of Faith.

Hello. 

Do you ever catch yourself looking at before and after photos?  You know, those ones that capture a man’s balding head before, and then his full head of hair after?  ‘A woman’s hips and thighs that look like saddlebags before and then the smooth curves after?  ‘An adolescent’s acne-marked skin before compared with the clear complexion after?  I must admit, I find myself looking at the photographs… seems I am always looking to see the after.

With regard to one’s faith, there is a before and after as well.  Maybe the clearest indication of inner change in someone who claims Jesus as Lord is his outer peace …  or her newfound joy.  It is not uncommon for the new Christian to say, ‘I have never felt like this… I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if I can explain it, but I feel different.’ 

Paul captures the dramatic contrast:

“For we ourselves have known what it is to be ignorant, disobedient and deceived, the slaves of various desires and pleasant feelings, while our lives were spent in malice and jealousy—we were hateful and we hated each other. But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love towards man appeared, he saved us—not by virtue of any moral achievements of ours, but by the cleansing power of a new birth and the moral renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he gave us so generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour. The result is that we are acquitted by his grace, and can look forward to inheriting life for evermore. This is solid truth.” Titus 3.3-8, Phillips Translation.

The after should always look better than the before.  Life in Christ, the after, should feel and look different, and it usually does.  In the last months, I have observed new life in several and it is so beautiful, as new passions replace old ones, priorities shift, and healing of guilt and past wounds takes place. There is a newness of life wrought through the inner working of the Holy Spirit.  How right, how beautiful it is! 

An old tune I sung in high school choir plays in my mind, ‘Something beautiful, something good … all my confusion, he understood.  All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, but he made something beautiful of my life …’  As we accept the kindness of God our Savior, made possible through the work of Jesus, the Son of God on the cross, God the Holy Spirit comes and makes something beautiful of our lives.  That is the beauty of the work of the blessed trinity in our lives.  How I love the three-in-one in my life!

I am wondering if you feel the joy of the new life you have been given, or if someone or something have made you feel like you are back in the before picture.  Perhaps the pressures or the cares of this life have just overtaken you, do not forget you are a child of the King, meant to have a seat at his banquet table.  Jesus said he came to give us life abundant—life to the full—and that means, life with him changes everything. 

Almost daily I pray that the Holy Spirit will come and renew me … will come and refill me … remind me of the new life I have been given, that I am meant to be living.  Reminds me of another old song I used to sing, ‘Come, Holy Spirit, I need you; come, sweet Spirit, I pray.  Come in thy strength and thy power, come in thy own gentle way.’  Oh, how we need the Holy Spirit to fill us to overflowing.  Paul said that we are to be filled—and keep on being filled—with the Holy Spirit of God.*

Not feeling like the after picture?  Wonder if your new life in Christ is real?  Pray that the Holy Spirit of God will renew you once again.  "Holy Spirit, come and fill me, renew me this day.  Amen."

*Ephesians 5.18 – the Greek translation of the verb – ‘be filled’