“I rejoice in your word Lord, like one who discovers a great treasure. I love your instructions. I will praise you seven times a day because all your regulations are just. Those who love your instructions have GREAT PEACE AND DO NOT STUMBLE.” (Psa. 119:162-165) I love the promise is expressed in this verse AMY. To those who love God’s instructions, nothing will cause us to stumble, nothing will defeat us, everything fits, we will not stumble around in the dark, we are completely secure, and therefore we are not upended. It is a promise of a personal security in a topsy-turvy, dangerous, uncertain, and sometimes very hostile world. Nothing we do can change the character of the world because the devil wants to change us, to cause us to conform to the world. It is what it is. But there is something we can do to keep the world from permanently CHANGING US.
“…do not be 1CONFORMED to this world, but be 2TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Rom. 12:2) 1suschēmatizō: fashion one’s self according to this world. 2metamorphoō: to be changed into another form. “Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was 2TRANSFIGURED before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.” (Matt. 17:1-2) In Christ’s transformation AMY, He was temporally changed from His human body to His glorified body.
What about us, how are we transformed? “…our old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him…For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be DEAD INDEED TO SIN, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 6:6-11)
Your Personal Pastor -Bill Stockham