Refashioned in His Image

June 19

"We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory."
2 Corinthians 3:18

TRUE SUCCESS

All at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious -- all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy.

No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure -- that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation -- being sent to prison -- was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory. -- Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship


This statement by Mr. Colson is particularly up-lifting because it points out Christ’s transformative power over our impotence and fallibility. We tend to shirk from the mistakes we have made, from the errors in judgment that we have arrived upon, from the thorny decisions that have pricked our sensibilities and wounded our perception of ourselves.

But Jesus has taken them, bathed them in His blood, and used them to form us into a people who are compassionate, who are understanding, who are forgiving...because we know how essential the gift of forgiveness has been to us. Because we know how precious has been our own transformation from our failure to Christ's success, we can graciously offer the precious gift of understanding and forgiveness to others who are flawed vessels like ourselves.

Because of Jesus, we who are wretched and frail become whole and strong; we who are steeped in trespasses become pure in the blood of the One who died to set us free from the worst aspects of our selfhood. May we walk in the freedom of who we are in Christ, for He has paid an incalculable price to set us free. May we be used of Him as He used Charles Colson--so fully that even the worst aspect of who we are becomes an exultant evidence of His glory.

May Jesus so fill you that there is no room within you for self-doubt or depression or despair or any negative thing. People may attempt to impose their negative perceptions upon you, but they don't see you as Jesus sees you—through the cleansing of His own shed blood in which you are bathed. Walk in victory today and all your days, for your Savior and Lord, in spite of your greatest failures, has made you into an image of Himself.