As an example of a transformed life, there is a man who is part of one of the Summit’s prison campuses and has been in prison for 14 years. All signs point to him being innocent, set up by others in power to take the fall for some shady dealings. When he was convicted, he lost everything—his livelihood, his life savings, his reputation, his wife. His story is heartbreaking.
“Still, I thank God for this,” he has shared. “Because before this happened, I thought I was God. So, God let this happen to show me I was not God, and in here, in prison, I found him. And I wouldn’t trade what I’ve found in God for all the freedom and all the riches in the world.”
Like this man, can you look back at your life and see how God wrote your story? You may discover a transformed life.
The Apostle Paul recognized God’s pursuit of and provision for him, even when he had made a living out of persecuting the church. Then, after he became a Christian, he was able to communicate how Jesus had transformed his life, and his witness is one of the most profound in Christian history.
In his letter to the Galatians, one of the ways Paul defended the gospel was by pointing to three ways he experienced Jesus in his personal life. While you probably haven’t seen a visible manifestation of the resurrected Jesus like Paul did, if you’ve really met Jesus, these things will be true of you, too.
3 Signs of a Transformed Life
1. “I see how God pursued me.”
When Paul talks about his conversion, he talks as if God was the one acting, and he, Paul, is the one being acted upon: “But when God, who from my mother’s womb set me apart and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:15-16 CSB).
Someone who has had a genuine experience with Jesus usually feels less like it was a decision that he made and more like something that happened to him, less something that he took up and more something that took him up.
Every person I know who has walked with Jesus has admitted that when they look back, they recognize that God was the one at work in their salvation. They see how God was putting people into their lives, questions in their heart, and sometimes even painful experiences in their path—all to draw them to himself.