Seeing everything in life as an opportunity to worship God!
I hope and pray that you do remember that day, and that you celebrate the wonderful blessing that day brought into your life. I pray that you are walking in the newness of life, the transformation that comes when one gives their life to Christ! I pray that the Gospel has taken complete hold of your life and that the greatest day in history has brought you life and life to the fullest!
God is the one who turns our shame into His glory, ashes into beauty, graves into gardens! When we come to Jesus in faith, we die to ourselves and allow Him to work in us. As a result, He produces a great garden of restoration in the life that has died to itself and transformed to live for the glory of God!
We must be careful not to forget that it is God who is at work within us to produce these fruits, not a vain effort of will from us. This is a hard concept to grasp, but I believe that many of us get caught up in defeat too many times because we do not understand this concept. This is a concept/principle that I believe is so critical in our walk of faith – Allow God to transform us without us trying to reform us! See, God wants to make us new creations, He isn’t trying to take the old us and form us into a new us. His work is a completely new life in Him. We get caught up in trying to take the old us and forcing it, or molding it, into this new life we are trying to live in Christ. This doesn’t work, and it causes all sorts of frustration. The Scripture above says that we were these things, but now we are made new! Why would a butterfly ever crawl on the ground like a caterpillar again? Why would we ever want to go back to our old ways? We are new in Him.
To the issues listed above (Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, debt, status, politics, abortion, gender identification, marriage, legislation, masks, religion, etc.), we need to look at each of these issues through a Biblical, and eternal perspective in order to approach these issues from a transformed and informed (Biblically) mindset. When we do this, we will find it easier to resist the worldly patterns and stay strongly planted on the Biblical pattern of godliness as we make decisions. Be careful not to be driven by your feelings, always be driven by faith and facts, and it will be very difficult for you to conform yourself to anything that is worldly and ungodly. We are of God’s kingdom and our “agenda’s” in life need to reflect that truth!