Author: Pastor Rufus Ajiboye

While growing up and changing we will see how we become more patient. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit God wants to be visible in your life. Therefore, God sometimes permits conflicts in your life, to help you with developing the fruit of patience. God desires to trample our pride thus transforming us into likeness of loving, persevere Christ. You are still arrogant if you show resentment at nonsense. God desires to help you to get rid of this arrogance. That´s why He allows people to do wrong to us. God is trying to teach us how to handle such situations, so that we are able to build relationships with people as His representatives on this Earth. Everything God permits in our life works together for good if we let Him mould us.

If we never stop following Jesus, He will change us making those changes more and more obvious in our lives and for the people around us.

The fact that we have become believers yet doesn´t mean we have become perfect. That´s why we should not represent ourselves as such in front of other people. Surely we are not perfect. We are still undergoing improvement process. We are still under process of changes as we follow Jesus and submit ourselves to His Spirit. God changes us as we renew our mind and put aside our old man, as we deny ourselves and carry the cross. All these things have an impact on us helping us to behold the glory of the Lord.

In order for me to change I need to follow Jesus. It means I need to follow and submit to His Word and His instructions. It means to spend time with Him to learn His heart and to participate in His mission. To follow Christ also means to imitate Him in all things. It means to react like He reacts, to speak like He speaks, to love what He loves and to hate what He hates.

When Jesus said He would make us, He meant “He would make us, so that other people seeing you could say you have been made in Heaven”.

If we allow God to change us His way and we follow Jesus, people around will see a reflection of Heaven in our life and in our ministry.

Why did God save us? Why did He call us? Why do we attend our church?

Consider these questions! What has changed in your life of a christian during the last two years? Ask yourself this question seriously! Slow down before saying that changes are taking place in your life! Make a list of what exactly has changed in your life! Changes if those have really happened must be apparent and certain. As a christian who attends church, reads the Bible, prays and listens to outstanding teachings and sermons how have you been changed for the last 5 years?

God has no problem to change any situation; but He is more interested in changing us into the image of Christ. He wants to lift us up. He needs courageous sons and daughters who – like Jesus – spread His Kingdom on earth. God is looking for people whose hearts are full of faith and who do not doubt power and wisdom of the Almighty God.

What does the word “all” include? Everything that is happening in your life right now! God wants to reach a certain goal; and in order to do that He uses even our circumstances. He allows particular difficult situations to happen to us in order to change and transform us and our character, to make us more like Jesus.

It is quite often that we oppose changes; we resist any changes because we are creatures of habit. If something is new and unusual for us, we don’t like it. Is that the truth? Whatever is unusual to us scares us. We love the comforts of life and if something upsets our comfortable position, we start to fight it with all of our strength.

Nevertheless God calls every person to go through changes.

Whom do you follow in your life? What is the engine of your life? What is your friendship with other people based upon? What makes you rejoice in your life? Is your dedication connected to eternal life and God´s will for your life?

There are many things that make people joyful and that´s great. However, Jesus pointed out that His disciples joy should rather be based on the goals and values of the Kingdom of God. Being glad about passing things is not the true joy, yet. The true joy comes when you can connect all the events of your life with fulfilling of the eternal purpose, one you are even ready to suffer for.