Each of us is in the process of ‘becoming’. No human person is static, unchanging, immutable. We will change over time. The question is: How do we want to change?
Have you considered that God could and wants to change your life? Shared below are 3 stories from the Bible of people whose lives changed and started over, when they responded positively to God.
In Genesis 12:1–5, we read a story of great change that took place two millennia before the time of Christ.
Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram departed, as the LORD had directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. And Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions and people they had acquired in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan.
Abram took heed of this call of God to move to a place that God would show him. To do this, he had to leave his country, his relatives and his father’s house. Abram was not going to be travelling alone.. he had quite the entourage: he had his wife, his nephew, his servants and vast material possessions to bring along. Why was Abram willing to make such a drastic change? The answer might have been because of the greatness of the promise God made to him. Abram was 75 years old when God called him — one is never too old to change! Abram walked with God, and a quarter century later, God gave Abram a new name: Abraham, which meant “father of many”, for Abraham would be the father of many nations.
In Luke 19:2–9, we see the story of Zacchaeus, a man reviled by the inhabitants of Jerusalem because he served the Romans as a tax collector, change in an encounter with Jesus.
And there was a man named Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, who was very wealthy. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but could not see over the crowd because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see Him, since Jesus was about to pass that way. When Jesus came to that place, He looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down, for I must stay at your house today.” So Zacchaeus hurried down and welcomed Him joyfully. And all who saw this began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinful man!” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will repay it fourfold.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Zacchaeus was wealthy, living in comfort at the expense of the people on whom he enforced Rome’s taxes. But he knew he had something missing in his life. It wasn’t popularity that he was seeking, for that was the trade-off he was willing to make for wealth. Zacchaeus desired salvation, but was probably unwilling to give up his profession, repent publicly or make restitution to the people he had wronged, to ‘deserve’ salvation. When Jesus appeared, all it took for Zacchaeus to change was eye-contact with Jesus and a word from the Lord to Zacchaeus to take him into his house.
A third story is found in Acts 9:1–18, where we see Saul, an enemy of the early church, change when he encountered Jesus on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus to arrest Christians there.
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord. He approached the high priest and requested letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As Saul drew near to Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” “Who are You, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” He replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the voice but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could not see a thing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and he did not eat or drink anything… Ananias went to the house, and when he arrived, he placed his hands on Saul. “Brother Saul,” he said, “the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” At that instant, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and his sight was restored. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. And he spent several days with the disciples in Damascus.
Saul was the supreme anti-Christian. If he had been there, he would probably have been part of the mob that clamoured for Jesus’ crucifixion. Saul was present at the stoning of Stephen (a disciple of Jesus), giving approval to his death (Acts 8:1). Saul, blind with rage against Christianity, was literally stopped in his tracks on the road to Damascus, by a blinding light within which Jesus spoke to him. All that he had wrongly believed to that point about Jesus changed in an instant, as he encountered the very Jesus that he had opposed. Saul became a follower of Jesus, assumed the name Paul and became the great apostle of Christ to the Gentile world.
In each of the examples above, the men started over when they encountered God. Perhaps noteworthy is that they were not necessarily seeking for a change, or for God. Their positive response to God transformed each of their lives. I shall quote one more passage from the Bible — James 4:7–10:
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
This passage tells us how we can be victorious in life, and that it is not all our doing. As we submit ourselves to God, we will have victory over the devil, over our sin and over the world. God is not passive in our lives — He will lift us up. Now, how’s that for starting over?