Do You Know Me Now?

"My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure
you that the grace of God is with you no matter what happens."
1 Peter 5:12b (NLT)

The time is well passed to grow up, to put behind us all the foolish ways we had of looking at things when we were teenagers. "Of course, your former friends are very surprised when you no longer join them in the wicked things they do, and they say evil things about you. But just remember that they will have to face God..." (1 Peter 4:4-5 NLT)

Sometimes those changes are hard to understand, when someone is different than you have always known him or her to be, but times do change and so do people, especially when a heart has been surrendered to God. "...God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3b NLT)

As parents, we must have great patience with our children as they grow, as God does with us. In 1 Peter 3:19, it says "...long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat." Can’t you just see it? God could have had that boat built in the blink of an eye, Noah took about a hundred years...and God waited for him. I wonder what lessons Noah learned, besides how a boat went together? He must have had a lot of time to think over his life as he worked, and when he was finished; he was more than likely a different man than when he started. His patient Father watched him work and grow and learn and was probably beaming with his son, Noah, when he was done with such a huge project that was built out of obedience.

Everything we have gone through during our growing-up years is what shaped all of us. It is part of who we were, but it does not have to be the whole of who we are now in Christ! We are a new creation when we are willing to lay it all down at the foot of the throne, bringing it into the light and asking for forgiveness. "This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light." (1 Peter 2:9 NLT) We all have a past, but it doesn’t have to be dragged into our future!

Looking back gives us the opportunity to also to see how far we have come...to examine who we are now as opposed to who we were then. If we are the same, something is wrong! We are missing something very important in this life...growth! Yes, we will have all grown older, and hopefully wiser and maybe even financially, but that is not what God is looking at. He wants to see us grow closer to Him through the years, to have taken the fiery trials we have been through and let them bring Him glory, to offer our hearts each day to Him for inspection, for purification, for renewal...He wants to grow us up in His way, in holiness, far beyond the natural, worldly way of growth that surrounds us.