True Change

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

My name is Amy Boucher-Pye, and I called our reading today, True Change. Raised in a turbulent home in South London, Claude started selling marijuana at 15 and heroin when he was 25. Needing a cover for his activities, he became a mentor to young people. Soon he became intrigued by his manager, a believer in Jesus, and wanted to know more. After attending a course exploring the Christian faith, he dared Christ to come into his life.

I felt such a welcoming presence, he said. People saw a change in me instantly. I was the happiest drug dealer in the world. Jesus didn't stop there. When Claude weighed up a bag of cocaine the next day, he thought, this is madness.

I'm poisoning people. He realized he must stop selling drugs and get a job. With the help of the Holy Spirit, he turned off his phones and never went back. This kind of change is what the apostle Paul referenced in Ephesians chapter four when he wrote to the church at Ephesus. Calling the people not to live separated from God, he urged them to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, and instead to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. The verb form Paul used implies that we're to put on the new self regularly. As with Claude, the Holy Spirit delights to help us to live out of our new selves and become more like Jesus.

Today's Our Dilly Bread devotional scripture reading is from Ephesians chapter four, verses seventeen through twenty-four. So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Let's pray. Loving God, thank you that you never give up on anyone. Reveal to us how we can become more like you as you change us through the work of your Holy Spirit day by day. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thanks for listening. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.