2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
I met Charlie in 1974, during my freshman year in college. We lived in the same dorm and on the same floor. Charlie and I didn’t hang out together, but when you live on the same dorm floor you get to know a little about each other even if you aren’t good friends.
Charlie wasn’t a big guy; he stood only about 5’4”, but he was very smart. For some reason I remember that he was an English major. And Charlie, like most of the guys on my freshman floor, liked to have fun in a fraternity house kind of way!
Now I had grown up in a pastor’s home and lived a fairly protected life. So the first few weeks on a college campus were something of a shock to my system. Pretty much all the things I had been taught to avoid; drinking, drugs, inappropriate relationships with the opposite sex. These things were part of every day dorm life. It seemed like there was a party every night and Charlie was a more than willing participant!
Now Charlie also happened to be a pretty nice guy. He laughed a lot and seemed to have plenty of friends. But Charlie was about as far from Jesus as anyone you could imagine.
Fast forward about 15 years.
I am flipping through the quarterly alumni publication from my alma mater – which I usually don’t even open – when I notice this small entry in the “news and notes” section for my class of 1978:
“Charlie ________ (I can’t use his last name because he serves in a very sensitive part of the world) and his wife will begin their first term with Wycliffe Bible Translators this fall. They will be serving in West Africa.”
I almost fell off my chair! My old party loving, profligate classmate had become a missionary; a Bible translator. That’s when I remembered he was an English major.
How does that happen? How can you explain such a dramatic transformation? The Apostle Paul says it this way:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
This kind of change; this kind of metamorphosis only happens through the power of Christ; and Christ is the power of death and resurrection.
In Ephesians 2, Paul writes:
As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world… But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:1, 4
Over the years since I learned of Charlie becoming a missionary I have tried several times to get in touch with him. Each time I was unable to reach him because he was serving in a very sensitive part of the world. Just this week I tried again; and this time, to my surprise, he responded! He happened to be in the U.S. visiting his ailing father and was able to respond to my email.
I had shared wit him how, following college, I had gone on to become a pastor and have now served at FBCG for over 25 years.
Charlie wrote back, in part:
“Who would have thought that a couple of scruffs like us would end up serving in the Kingdom of God? I know that was determined before the foundation of the earth, but I didn’t realize it until a year or so after I finished Davidson. I had been going very much in the opposite direction.”
I just smiled when I read the words, “a couple of scruffs like us”, because even though I was a Christian while in college I certainly did nothing to help Charlie move closer to Jesus.
But when I read that last line, tears of joy came to my eyes: “I had been going very much in the opposite direction.”
That’s true. That was true of Charlie, and at one point it was true for all of us!
In 1974 Charlie was dead, spiritually speaking. Today Charlie is very much alive! He’s alive because somewhere along the line he met Jesus, and in Jesus he was born again into new life!
Thank God for the power of his grace that produces new life, and for new life that produces change!
Pastor Brian Coffey
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment