I want to thank India Tornell for her journal entry today, it is nice to hear from each of you and your responses.  Brett

Today’s reading is The Book of Philemon .  Philemon was a Believer whose slave, Onesimus, stole money from him and ran away to Rome. While in Rome, he met up with Paul and became a Christian. This book is a letter from Paul to Philemon, asking him to accept Onesimus back.

This letter triggered memories of conversions I’ve witnessed over the years.  Many of these new believers seemed instantly transformed. They dressed differently, their face looked more alive and receptive, they responded differently to their friends and family, their worldview changed.  I have an old audio tape labeled “Why Christianity?”  In this tape missionaries describe new believers living in grass hut villages and how they suddenly began cleaning and beautifying their huts, their village and their personal appearance. They knew without being told that their pagan practices were wrong.  Prior to listening to this tape, I thought “Christianity” was one of several religions and you could just check them out and choose the one you thought was the coolest.  Long ago, this precious little tape redirected me in that simple, but important understanding - the difference between receiving the Person of Christ and joining a religion. This, in turn, led me to understand the fallacy of  “losing your salvation”.  While I can easily comprehend leaving a religion, if we are, like Paul, truly a new creation, it is not possible to become a former new creation.

Paul understood what Onesimus now was. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.   And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:17-19).

Lord, remind me every minute if necessary, to remain available to you, so that you may accomplish Your work in and through me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 5:31 am and is filed under Daily Readings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.