When you become a Christian, the strangest thing happens: you begin to like things you didn’t like before and do things you didn’t want to do before. The end result is remarkably predictable: you end up paying close attention to an ancient book, talking often to other people about “religion”, and singing loud in church.
And in your wildest dreams, you would have never imagined.
Now, you can call this a miracle – and that’s true, it is – but you might also call it the New Covenant:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. Hebrews 8:10, 11 (ESV)
How can you explain this, when out of the blue, suddenly someone longs to serve Christ and study His word and tell the world about Him. But when you think about it, how else could this whole thing work, but that God would actually change our desires, or as Jonathan Edwards called them, our affections? You see, we like new stuff because…we are new. We like things we’ve never liked before…because we’re not the people we used to be.
My favorite verse on this is found in the Old Testament prophet of Jeremiah:
I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. Jeremiah 32:40 (NIV)
Inspired to fear Him! Glorious!
So…has it happened to you? Have you come to know a God who has done so much good to you that you are positively inspired to love and serve Him? Mind you, you’re not perfect in your obedience…but you’re definitely inspired. And would you say that by the power of His grace, the LAST thing you want to do in all the world…is turn away from Him?
If so, then give glory to God, because unless I miss my guess, you too are a partaker of the New Covenant.
Entrusted with the Gospel 