Seventh-Day Adventist Devotional For Children: “God Changes People”
DAILY BREAD – A DEVOTIONAL FOR CHILDREN.
EASTERN NIGERIA UNION CONFERENCE CHILDREN’S MINISTRIES.
Monday, May 15, 2023
Topic: God changes people
In the past, some of you were like that. But you were washed clean. You were made holy. And you were made right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11
Our identity is one of the most personal important things in our lives. Just as much as our identity can be destroyed, so also our identities are incredibly powerful creatively.The Bible talks a lot about identity. The Bible says who you are, who you are identified with, is the most crucial question you will ever ask. The Bible entirely rejects the idea that blessedness, happiness, satisfaction, joy, comfort, peace can come by us constructing our own identities for ourselves. In Christ, you are not now what you were once.
God changes people. Not only others, but also you. We find a text about this when Paul writes to the Corinthians about how some of them were. He sums up: “the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practise homosexuality, thieves, the greedy, the drunkards, revilers, and swindlers’ (1 Cor. 6:9-10). “Such were some of you”! You were like this, but you are not like this anymore. There must have been some tremendous changes.
Complete lives have been radically changed, from death to life. And not by exception. For though the apostle writes: “Some of you”, he writes this as an appeal to the whole congregation. And he names all kinds of sinners, in plural. You were like that, but you are not like that anymore. How is that possible? “You are cleansed”, most often refering to the washing away of sins, Yes, we are washed in such a way that we change on the inside. We not only become clean, but also different. Forgiveness is there for everyone who confesses his sins to Jesus. The change goes as high as it goes deep, which encompasses our whole life. A new Lord starts to rule us from the inside, we obtain different thoughts, different desires, a different inner joy and a new kind of satisfaction.
Thoughts for reflection
If you are in Christ, there has been a fundamental change of your identity, a reformation, a transformation. Your identity has been radically changed in Christ so that in Christ you are not now, what you were once. You have had an identity transformation so fundamental so deep that you can no longer identify with your old sins, you have a new identity that’s given to you not by our old sins but rather you are identified in Christ.
Song
Marvelous grace of our loving Lord.
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt.
Refrain
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin!
Prayer
Thank you, loving Father, for reaching out to me, changing me, saving me! Thank You that I am washed clean in the blood of Christ, positioned in You, and set apart unto You. I pray that I may grow in grace, mature in the faith, and walk in spirit and truth to Your praise and glory. In Jesus’ name I pray, AMEN.
