God Wants to Help You and Me Become Like Jesus!
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness…’” Genesis 1:26
God created humankind by His own design, in His likeness and image. If we had continued in perfect obedience to Him, His likeness would have remained complete. But with our disobedience, we took on an inward nature of our own design, instantly making us distinctively different from Him – separating us from Him. We became the slaves of Satan, the archenemy of God and the one we chose to obey. He was the one who led us astray by appealing to our weaknesses, knowing that God had put within us the ability to choose who would be our master.
Through His infinite wisdom, God knew this would happen from the beginning and had prepared His perfect world to take a new course. No longer would it be a place of paradise for His obedient children, but rather God subjected it to our futility. Because of our sin, His beautifully created world became cursed ground – a place of vanity, struggling under the depths of despair. Even though he subjected it to futility, He did not reject it altogether, for He also subjected it to a future hope. He gave His divine promise for its eventual restoration through the reign of His coming kingdom.
When God’s Son came, He identified the world as His Father’s field – a field for planting, for cultivating, for growing, and for harvesting new sons and daughters, thereby giving hope to the hopeless. With this revelation, we could see more clearly than ever before that the new course the world had taken after the fall of man some four thousand years prior to the coming of Jesus Christ had ultimate purpose. Even in its despairing state, God was, and is, using it as an instrument in His hand to restore all things to Himself. Throughout this whole process, now having endured nearly six thousand years, God has worked through the difficulties of the world around us to reveal His glorious attributes. Through every point of trial, His loving hand awaits us still! Time and again God has sought to draw us away from our fallen state into His promise – a place of whole restoration!
He continues to graciously labor among humankind to validate the surety of His promise, to restore all those who obey Him through simple, childlike faith. The ultimate proof God gave to bring it all about was by the living sacrifice of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Through our faith in His life, death, burial and resurrection, God offers us eternal forgiveness and new life. Now through genuine faith in the complete and finished work of Jesus Christ alone, any person may be restored and made perfectly whole for God’s immediate acceptance. In addition, by that same act of faith every believer is enabled to become more like Him here and now! By the indwelling person of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, God has opened the way for us into His continuing grace, empowering us to do His will right here in the earth, now! We are also eligible to reap the countless benefits of being in His family of promise! Of course, we will not be made perfect until we see Him as He is; but for as long as we submit to Him day by day based upon our growing knowledge and understanding of Him, He will continue to change us day by day.
Have you ever fully trusted Jesus Christ alone to rescue you from your lost estate and to restore you wholly and completely to God in an instant? If you have not, you may do so right now! He will make you a new creature through saving grace found in Jesus Christ. Regardless of what you have done, or how “bad” you think you are, YOU ARE NOT BEYOND GOD’S FORGIVENESS!
Sincerely ask Him to forgive you of your sins and simply trust Him to cleanse you of all your past. Tell Him of your desire to obey Him, truly confessing your sorrow for disobedience. Then, you may receive His forgiveness! He will not cast you aside but rather, He will cause old things to pass away, and all things will become new! Then you will be completely restored in the eyes of God, accepted and embraced by Him as His child! You will also be empowered by His Spirit to live a progressively changed life, becoming just like Jesus!
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” II Corinthians 3:17
God created humankind by His own design, in His likeness and image. If we had continued in perfect obedience to Him, His likeness would have remained complete. But with our disobedience, we took on an inward nature of our own design, instantly making us distinctively different from Him – separating us from Him. We became the slaves of Satan, the archenemy of God and the one we chose to obey. He was the one who led us astray by appealing to our weaknesses, knowing that God had put within us the ability to choose who would be our master.
Through His infinite wisdom, God knew this would happen from the beginning and had prepared His perfect world to take a new course. No longer would it be a place of paradise for His obedient children, but rather God subjected it to our futility. Because of our sin, His beautifully created world became cursed ground – a place of vanity, struggling under the depths of despair. Even though he subjected it to futility, He did not reject it altogether, for He also subjected it to a future hope. He gave His divine promise for its eventual restoration through the reign of His coming kingdom.
When God’s Son came, He identified the world as His Father’s field – a field for planting, for cultivating, for growing, and for harvesting new sons and daughters, thereby giving hope to the hopeless. With this revelation, we could see more clearly than ever before that the new course the world had taken after the fall of man some four thousand years prior to the coming of Jesus Christ had ultimate purpose. Even in its despairing state, God was, and is, using it as an instrument in His hand to restore all things to Himself. Throughout this whole process, now having endured nearly six thousand years, God has worked through the difficulties of the world around us to reveal His glorious attributes. Through every point of trial, His loving hand awaits us still! Time and again God has sought to draw us away from our fallen state into His promise – a place of whole restoration!
He continues to graciously labor among humankind to validate the surety of His promise, to restore all those who obey Him through simple, childlike faith. The ultimate proof God gave to bring it all about was by the living sacrifice of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Through our faith in His life, death, burial and resurrection, God offers us eternal forgiveness and new life. Now through genuine faith in the complete and finished work of Jesus Christ alone, any person may be restored and made perfectly whole for God’s immediate acceptance. In addition, by that same act of faith every believer is enabled to become more like Him here and now! By the indwelling person of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, God has opened the way for us into His continuing grace, empowering us to do His will right here in the earth, now! We are also eligible to reap the countless benefits of being in His family of promise! Of course, we will not be made perfect until we see Him as He is; but for as long as we submit to Him day by day based upon our growing knowledge and understanding of Him, He will continue to change us day by day.
Have you ever fully trusted Jesus Christ alone to rescue you from your lost estate and to restore you wholly and completely to God in an instant? If you have not, you may do so right now! He will make you a new creature through saving grace found in Jesus Christ. Regardless of what you have done, or how “bad” you think you are, YOU ARE NOT BEYOND GOD’S FORGIVENESS!
Sincerely ask Him to forgive you of your sins and simply trust Him to cleanse you of all your past. Tell Him of your desire to obey Him, truly confessing your sorrow for disobedience. Then, you may receive His forgiveness! He will not cast you aside but rather, He will cause old things to pass away, and all things will become new! Then you will be completely restored in the eyes of God, accepted and embraced by Him as His child! You will also be empowered by His Spirit to live a progressively changed life, becoming just like Jesus!
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” II Corinthians 3:17