UGLY TURNS BEAUTIFUL

Is. 60:15 ¶ Whereas you have been forsaken and hated….. I will make you a joy from age to age.

Some of the worst people in the Bible actually become some of the most powerful. Several names immediately come to my mind; Saul of Tarsus, Mary Magadalene, and of course the demon possessed man from Gadara. We all know Saul’s story, he was persecuting and executing Christians until that fateful day he encountered Christ on the road to Damascus. In a moment of time he became a different man. The grace of God not only accepted Paul, it made him into the greatest of all apostles. Mary’s story is also quite well know. Probably a woman of the night possessed by seven demons. God’s love delivered, forgave, and transformed Mary. She actually became the first witness of the resurrection. Also, the demoniac from Gadara. The nameless man was used to change his world. A great revival took place in Gadara shortly after his miracle. Several months after the folks from that region asked Jesus to leave, thousands joyfully received Him in response to the Gadarene’s testimony. Here are some thoughts from A.B. Simpson about the Lord transforming the worst of us.

“God loves to take the worst of lost men and make them the most magnificent memorials of His redeeming love and power. He loves to take the victims of Satan’s hate and the most fearful examples of his power to destroy and use them to illustrate and illuminate the possibilities of divine mercy and the creativity of the Holy Spirit.

He loves to take the things in our own lives that have been the worst, the hardest and the most hostile to God, and to transform them so that we shall be the opposites of our former selves. The sweetest spirits are made from the most stormy and self-willed; the mightiest faith is created out of the wilderness of doubts and fears; the divinest love is transformed out of stony hearts of hate and selfishness.

The grace of God is equal to the most uncongenial temperaments and to the most unfavorable circumstances. Its glory is to transform a curse into blessing and show to men and angels of ages yet to come that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (Romans 5:20).”

So what kind of horrible person were you? This shameful past can be turned into a powerful weapon for the glory of God.