Changing by the Power of the Holy Spirit

I heard a delightful story recently, though I suspect that others have possibly heard it before: A young boy invited Jesus into his life and at the end of the service went up to the pastor and said, “I’ve just invited Jesus into my life but the problem is that Jesus is so big and I’m so little, there are going to be bits of Him sticking out all over the place”. “Yes,” answered the pastor, “that’s the whole point”.

Once we have committed our lives to Jesus, He comes into us by the power of the Holy Spirit, gradually changing us from the inside out. Some things are easy to change and sometimes they happen instantly. For example, someone I know used to blaspheme before she became a Christian, using the name of God, but the moment she offered her life to Jesus, that stopped.

There are other things that are more difficult to change. When we have been deeply hurt in the past we may be reluctant to allow Jesus to come to that area of pain because we feel that if we let Him in we shall become vulnerable to being hurt again. What tends to happen is that we cover up the hurt with protective habits like defensiveness, withdrawing into isolation, prickliness, putting up barriers; all of which prevent us from developing into the people God wants us to be. When Jesus died on the cross He carried all our pain with Him, but in order for that to be effective in our lives, we need to allow Him into the hurt by forgiving the ones who have hurt us and allowing the pain to be released to Jesus.

This can be a scary process as it means learning to trust when perhaps our trust has been shattered in the past, but Jesus is totally trustworthy and will never let us down, no matter how the human beings around us behave, and the more we allow Him to take over in the hurting areas and bring about the changes He wants, the more like Him we shall become.

Prayer: Dearest Father, I know that there are things in my life that are displeasing to you and I want to change them. Please give me the courage to surrender the pain and all its protection into Your loving hands and enable me to learn to trust You more. In Jesus’ name I ask it, Amen.