Before and After

I'm still losing weight, eating right and headed toward a more fit and healthy body. I have lost 58 pounds since mid-June, in 148 days to be precise. One of the things that keeps me motivated is to hear other people's success stories and see their Before and After pictures.

You know how it is, you're channel surfing and see some infomercial for the latest exercise equipment or training program and..."Here's Christy...she lost 137 pound in a year...and kept it off..." or see how some guy buys some workout CDs and gets absolutely "ripped" in just 90 days, muscles bulging all over.

I see those pictures and think to myself, "Yes, you can do it! This is possible!" Many people not only need a physical makeover, but a spiritual makeover as well. I love this passage of scripture I ran across in the book of Colossians, in the Bible. It describes my Before and After experience after coming to believe in Jesus and begin following His Way:

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation." (Colossians 1:21-22)

I like that part about being "free from accusation." There is a verse is the book of Revelation that says "the Enemy accuses the Brothers before God day and night." But the accusations don't stick--it's not that they are not true, they are, every ugly, deadly one of them. The things is that they don't matter to God anymore. When God looks at me He doesn't see my sins and failures. In His sight I am now holy, without blemish, and therefore free from accusation.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, and all things have become new...Jesus died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." (2 Corinthians 5:17, 15)

~ Father, thank you for paying the price to set me free--free from the penalty of sin, and daily freeing me from the power of sin in my life. Thank you for making all things new. Amen.