Characteristics Of A Transformed Life. Acts 9

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Introduction: Can anybody be really transformed? What do you think when you think of a better or transformed life? Man is chasing after a better transformed life. The world comes up with various methods to transform people’s lives.

Phyllis Diller, the comedian actress had a very expensive facelift. In an interview she said that it transformed her life. I don’t know about that. I do know it transformed her face. Annabel Giles, British model, TV presenter and actress said that plastic surgery had changed her life for better.

People say, I got a new job and I am a transformed man or I will get over my financial problem and I will have a new transformed life. Some say, if I lose weight I will have a transformed life.

The advertisements say, if I use certain products I’ll be a new man or a new woman. Some people think that when they fall in love that transforms them. Yea, it does for a while. Some say it is education that transforms. If we could educate people we can change our society. So we educated people and now we have smarter criminals. All of this is hopelessly superficial transformation.

Can you actually take a person and make him a good one? Can a shattered broken relationship be put back together as good as new or even better.

I mean, can’t we transform man somehow? God has something to say about it Jeremiah 13:23 Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. God says that it is against your very nature to change. Man doing anything and everything to try to alter what he is, is unsuccessful.

Will a new deodorant soap do it? Jeremiah 2:22 Although you wash yourself with soap and use an abundance of cleansing powder, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” declares the Sovereign Lord. Soap doesn’t do it. Very superficial.

You say I know what will change the world, love and friendship. What the world needs now is love. Jeremiah 9:4 Beware of your friends; do not trust anyone in your clan. For every one of them is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. Believe me, this world is full of con men. Everybody that talks about love doesn’t do it.

You say well, if you can’t really love everybody or have good friends, maybe then what we need to do is have firmer laws and correction methods. Jeremiah 2:30 In vain I punished your people; they did not respond to correction. God said, I tried correction and that didn’t do it.

Soap doesn’t transform you. Love does not transform us. And even rules, discipline and punishment doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. Somebody said, “I guess the only way to transform people is to smash them, crush out their personality.” Proverbs 27:22 Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding them like grain with a pestle, you will not remove their folly from them. You can’t press upon man a crushing debilitating experience and expect to turn him into something wonderful.

There is no outside force that can change man. None. You know why? Man doesn’t have an outside problem, man has an inside problem. Isaiah 1:5 Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? (Listen, here’s the problem.) Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted.

We cannot transform people on the outside. It’s got to be something on the inside. Only God can do it. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! God is in the business of transforming lives.

And we come in Acts Chapter 9 we find God transforming the life of Saul. Now, Saul, just let me give you what kind of a guy he was. Just let your imagination run over these thoughts.

The world’s worst sinner. Saul claimed to be the world’s worst sinner. Now we know we sin, but I doubt whether any of us would announce our sins. But Saul claimed to be the world’s worst sinner, and he really had a lot of things to support that claim. He lived his life to hurt, to injure and if need be, to kill people who disagreed with him. In fact, by his life he blasphemed God and he made good people who loved God suffer torture. He was a bad man, very bad. Acts 26:9-11, Acts 8:3

Saul worked for the dirty politicians in Jerusalem. He as a man who was the hireling of dirty politicians. He worked for the crooks in Jerusalem. He was very, very evil, but you know something? That man was absolutely, totally transformed, totally transformed. And it wasn’t superficial, it was deep.