I came across a quote by Chris Donato on his blog that struck me as being sooo true: ”It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Isn’t it so? My sister dropped off some pictures that my parents had of me as I was growing up. Pictures of me as a baby and the progression through the years. I am not the same as I was. Physically I have changed. More than that I have changed in other ways as well. In my understanding of Jesus and the way he works in our world my understanding has changed as well. To mature means my understanding has to change. Yet myself at times and others I have observed can get so unnerved at the change which maturity brings. Paul says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” 1 Cor 13.11
I have heard credit given to Augustine for a quote that goes something like this: “I am no longer the man you knew.” when he was approached by a person who knew him prior too his conversion to being a follower of Jesus Christ. the same is true of me. When I run into old classmates from school who ask what I do now, I tell them I am a pastor. Sometimes the look in their eyes betrays the thought they are thinking, You, a pastor. “I am not the man you knew”
To all of that I say, Thank You Lord for rescuing me and bringing about transformation in my life, so that I am not the man I used to be.
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