Title: Real Change
(Acts 9:1-9)
1. Real change is from above.
It's been a month since the New Year, and it's already February.
As we enter the new year, we all want to change.
The theme of last week's stewardship retreat was 'Workers who respond to change'.
The world is changing so fast, how annoying would it be if my thoughts and life didn't change? Something everyone wants to change.
When people feel boredom in their lives, they seek to change something.
So, I try to change furniture, travel, and try to change the environment.
However, such an outward change cannot be regarded as a change in the true sense.
A true change is a change from the heart.
When you change your mind, your appearance will change and your actions will change.
Therefore, when we seek change from the heart, the body will follow.
However, this is only to some extent and has limitations.
This is because most of the cases are won in the heart, but lose to the body.
For example, if you see failures while trying to lose weight, most of them are the result of wanting the mind, but failing to overcome the desires of the flesh. People have all the thoughts they want to change, but they are drawn to the flesh and cannot follow their heart's desires.
And I lamented that I had a desire within me, but my fleshly desires were preventing me from fulfilling it.
This is true for anyone.
Because humans are essentially the same.
Who doesn't want to change because they don't want to change?
At the beginning of the new year, I said, 'I have to be a little different this year...', but that's just a joke, and that's the problem. Nevertheless, people want to change.
Without this consciousness, the very person would be dead.
Being alive is proof that we have a consciousness to change.
Therefore, real change is possible only by the power from above, not by my willpower. That was the first step in Saul's transformation into Paul.
2. Real change requires hearing the voice of God.
No real change can be expected from the sounds or writings of the world.
No matter how much you have mastered it, no one has ever changed.
No matter how many majors they majored in, no one has changed.
There is nothing as incompetent as a human being.
Because people don't change just because there are so many worlds.
In today's reality, do you play this board like this because there is no phosphorus?
no. It's because you're using it wrong as much as you have it.
Those who know the law more cleverly evade the law.
To change a person, you must directly listen to [God's voice].
[Heaven's voice] means [God's revelation].
God must have spoken to His people in this voice.
Sometimes it comes down to not being able to hear it.
The priest was like that.
Little Samuel heard it, but Eli the priest did not hear this voice.
All who have left great deeds have heard a voice from heaven.
In the wilderness of Tao, I heard this voice in the midst of a burning bush.
To experience real change, you must hear this voice. You should hear a voice calling out your name.
However, the way to hear this voice is not [arbitrary].
It is because he is a person who comes [vertically] from God.
This is sometimes heard of [by chance].
Or even in [emergency situations].
Fallen man will never be able to meet God in ordinary reality.
In most cases, we hear the voice of God at the crossroads of life and death.
There must be an event where God directly intervenes.
I also heard this voice when I was in pain in a hospital after a car accident in the United States. It was because I was under a lot of pressure because it had happened in a remote place where no one knew, and in the midst of uncertainty where all circumstances were not favorable. I still remember the voice I heard back then.
"Lord! I made a mistake. Now, just give me one more chance. I'm leaving."
I returned home unconditionally.
After that, there were many ways to tempt me to stay in America, but I defeated them all. At that time, many pastors lied a lot in front of the consulate while obtaining visas at the embassy. There were many pastors who said they would definitely come back and did not come back. I vowed in my heart that I would not become such a pastor.
And after that, a classmate from the school where I studied in the United States worked as a consul for a while, seducing me over and over again. But even then, they were all defeated. Then, I think that God has brought me up to this point and brought me to this point.
I still can't forget Easter 1968. U.S. Highway 81 is unforgettable.
Just as Saul met the Lord on the Damascus road, it is because I met the Lord on Highway 81 in America.
Dear saints!
Real change does not come about by one's willpower like this.
We believe that it is possible only through the providence of God and the power of force.
3. Only those who have experienced real change will realize the mission.
When Saul, who had been led away blind, was able to see again through Ananias' prayer, scales fell from his eyes and he could see again.
What had hitherto been hidden from his eyes was peeled off.
Looking at the way he has lived up to now, he realized how wrong it was. After that, he realized that his mission was not done by anyone, and he lived his life as a witness of the gospel. I decided to throw away all my former fondness like dung and know nothing but the gospel of Christ.
When I realized this mission (鵝욕뫝), I had no strength to bind him.
Even the Roman bayonet couldn't be beaten before him.
His body was imprisoned, but his spirit became more and more aroused.
In the end, the neck of the body fell before the sword of Rome, but his gospel conquered all of Rome. This was a great power.
When I saw the Roman prison where Paul was martyred several years ago, I was deeply moved.
It is said that when the sword of the person who executed the death penalty struck Paul in the neck, it bounced three times. And it is said that there was a spring of water.
So now I saw that a memorial was erected there and opened to many people. The road on which he was taken to the burial place was still preserved as bare ground.
It stirred the hearts of the pilgrims who followed the path that Paul followed.
What was it that Paul lacked to spend his whole life suffering like that?
He was one of the most elite courses of his time.
As a foreign Jew, he mastered both Greek philosophy and academics under Professor Gamaliel at the University of Tarsus in Cilicia.
Among his classmates, he became famous judges of the time and became professors. Later, Governor Festus, who was interrogating Paul, also recognized Paul and said, 'Paul! How much did Paul say when he said, 'Your many studies have made you mad'?
It's easy to tell if I'm a person who has taken an elite course.
But what made him suffer and become an evangelist of the gospel of Jesus, passing through the hurdles of death many times while being naked, unable to eat, and being beaten...? The more I think about it, the more I can't understand it with the rational reason of the world.
However, because he heard the voice of heaven and had the experience of meeting the Lord, no matter what anyone said, his sense of duty did not waver.
So I decided not to know anything other than the cross and resurrection of Christ.
In this way he became a man of thorough righteousness.
Therefore, there were many people who lived in the same era as Paul today, but their
We don't remember the name.
But even though it was Paul who seemed shabby at the time, and who looked like a madman, he conquered the world with the Lord.
He overcame the powerful Roman spear with the Gospel of the Cross without firing a single shot with his bare hands. This is the power of the gospel.
This is the power of the cross.
Everyone!
What do you see as a path that can truly change? We are helpless sinners.
No matter how many times we make up our minds, we make up our minds, we are sinners beyond salvation. Humans are human. We are all stinky humans.
No matter how much you dress up, no matter how fancy you wear, you are a stinky person.
God did not forsake such a human being and came to seek him.
And he calls us and makes us new people.
And he entrusts you with a mission. How grateful this is!
We must change for that. You have to be a new person.
To do that, you must meet God.
To do this, we must listen to God's voice.
For that to happen, things have to happen.
We can't make it artificial.
But, God gives you that opportunity.
Please do not give up at that time.
In that case, I hope you don't procrastinate.
Like Paul, you will have to fall down and ask, "Lord! Who are you?"
That is true prayer.
When you are healthy, prayer is not like prayer.
No matter how earnest I try to pray when I have time, it doesn't work.
That's why he gives us one chance.
that is our
It is a blessing to realize this before the shadows of death fall.
Blessings in the true sense are not and are not.
On the contrary, it may be a passage that leads me to the path of decadence.
They all committed crimes when they had spare time, and I have never seen them commit crimes when they were in an emergency or sick.
Do you want real change?
I hope you will hear the voice of God.
Now is the time to receive grace.
It's time to refine me with restructuring.
It's a time when you've been pushed to the extreme by losing your job.
It's time to lay sick.
We must not miss this opportunity. It is an opportunity to meet God.
May we all be people of real change. ??