Winds Of Change

Winds of Change

Sunday, October 05, 2014

By Rev. James May

Nothing that God does is ever done by chance. He is meticulous in his plans, paying absolute attention to even the smallest details to ensure that everything happens in proper order, at the proper time and in a way that fully complies with God’s own word and law. In his infinite wisdom and great foreknowledge, God always has complete control of all things in order that his perfect will and plan will be carried out without fail.

When I think of all the things that God has done in my life, your life and the life of this church, there can be no doubt that his hand has been guiding each of us every step of the way. Considering where he has brought us from in the past, the many paths of life that we all have walked, and then to see where we are today, it is nothing short of a miracle that we have been led to this hour and this place, all of us together as a Body of Christ, to perform a work for the Lord.

It may seem as though much of life has been just a series of coincidences, things just happened, many of which we had so little control over. You may have felt like a ship driven in the wind, going wherever life took you, out of control and headed for the rocks. Some of you have even crashed upon those rocks and you saw those days of sorrow and heartache when life became almost unbearable because of the burdens you carried.

But somehow, God brought you through it all, and the time came when you heard him call your name for the very first time. It may have been a still, whispering voice in your heart that called out to you that it’s time to make a change. On that day, the winds of change were caused to blow upon your heart as the Spirit of God began the first steps of turning your life around.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus in the darkness of the night in John chapter three, there was a great symbolism there. Nicodemus was a picture of mankind as a whole being held in the tight grip of darkness through the power of sin. Men dwell in spiritual darkness and there is no power within them to break free, but then comes the light of the gospel with the power to dispel the darkness.

Nicodemus moved among the shadows to avoid being seen by other Pharisees who would certainly condemn him for going to Jesus, but something inside of him was pushing him toward Jesus. It was the wind of change; the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing across his path in life, pushing him closer to the Lord that he might find the answer to being set free.

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, the mind of Nicodemus was not ready to receive spiritual truth, and he just couldn’t understand what Jesus meant or how such a thing could be possible. How can a grown man be born again as an infant? In the natural sense it was an impossibility, and when we look at the condition of the heart of a man or woman who is lost in the darkness of sin, it’s just impossible that we could ever break free. Since we are spiritually dead, how can we have any effect at all upon the supernatural? Flesh cannot break spiritual chains. Before those chains can be broken and we can be free, there has to be a change in us. We have to become much more than just a creature of flesh and blood, lost in a world of darkness.

Knowing that we can do nothing within ourselves, the Love of God begins to reach out to us as the wind of the Spirit begins to blow and calls us to go to Jesus in repentance.

There, at the foot of the cross, as we behold the Savior and surrender our lives to him, there is a change that happens as the Spirit of God blows across our dead soul and breathes new life into it. We are Born Again of the Spirit and we become a new creation; a new creature with a new life. This new birth brought about by the wind of the Holy Spirit gives us the power of the supernatural so that now we are able to break free from the supernatural chains of darkness because the blood of Jesus crushes the power that held us.

I’m glad the Winds of Change are still blowing today. The wind of the Spirit is ever moving across the face of the hearts of men as the Love of God ever reaches out to those who need a Savior!