Everything has Changed – Nothing has Changed

This is the nature of the Spiritual Awakening, if we insist on paying attention only to what we can see with our head-socket eyes, as opposed to the eyes of our understanding, the eyes of our heart. The thoughts, the beliefs that run through our minds, these change, this is the metanoia, this is the repentance sought by Jesus Christ when he announced:  “Repent and believe the Gospel.”

One man in the Stories of Alcoholics Anonymous writes about one man who was seized with a sudden fit of anxiety. He could not even leave his home, for fear of something terrible happening to him. His psychiatrist pressed him to walk around the block, no matter what it took, no matter how much it strained his nerves.

When he had the "spiritual awakening" as reported in the Big Book, the writer commented that "everything in my life changed, and yet nothing changed." This mindset, this attitude of mind I tried hard to get, I never quite understood in the first place. For a long time, I felt that a spiritual awakening had to do with being in the right place at the right time, but yet it was up to me to figure out this right place and this right time.

This was a story that I could relate to earlier in my life. On some days, I was seized with so great a fear that I could not even leave the house, I was so afraid to do something wrong, or end up being in the wrong place, as if this life was about ending up in the right place, for fear that I would miss God and His perfect will for my life.

Of course, I have since then learned that Christ in me, the hope of glory, can never steer me wrong. In fact, He leads me in the paths of righteousness (Psalm 23:3) because He has been made in me righteousness (1 Corinthians 1: 30), and in Him I have been made the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5: 21). Because I am learning now to renew my mind in line with the divine Word of God, I am transformed from glory to glory by the power of the Holy Spirit, and His light breaks forth from me. This is the blessed legacy for all who believe on Him, if they will receive His witness, His grace by faith every day. This is a matter of belief, of metanoia, of a changing of our minds, from believing that God is angry with us and that we must work to please Him, to believing that He has exhausted his righteous wrath against us on the Cross, putting His Beloved Son in our place! The more that we reflect on this wonderful truth, we will witness a dry, dull, and boring world transform into a wonder of opportunity for us to shine forth His grace:

"Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,

"And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. " (Mark 1: 14-15)

He leads me, He guides me, because He has become my life, and by His Holy Spirit His laws have been written on my heart and my mind. Never again does a believer have to live under the self-induced condemnation that he must try to discern God's will on his own. The more that we listen to the peace of God, which rules in the heart of every believer, we find ourselves walking by faith,  walking in the Spirit, not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, bearing fruit of righteous, giving all glory to God who made us, who loved us, who died for us, who lives for us, in us, and through us.