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The Transformation

Mark 7:17
“There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the thins which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.”
As I was reading my devotional this morning, it touched on something that I had said early on in my time here in Uganda: “You can’t run from sin because you can’t run from you.” Sin truly does live in my heart and it is only when I run to Jesus, who is the only One who can deliver me from myself, that my heart can be radically transformed. I can and have attempted in my own strength to change my heart, but this has only led to condemnation and failure. The Lord never asked me to fix myself, He has asked me to do nothing other than cry out to Him at street level so that He can fix me in my most broken state. That is how He wants me: battered, bruised, and broken because this is when I am honest; this is when I want nothing more than for the Father to fix what I have ruined, again. But, when I attempt to change what only the Lord is capable of changing, the result is a barren fruit tree. Behavior modification only lasts for a season when the heart is not truly transformed and in these moments, the only on e who I am fooling is myself. I cannot give myself what I do not already have; I cannot give myself true joy because I do not already possess it, I cannot heal myself from the hurts of my past because in and of myself, I do not have peace. Sure, I can seek peace and joy from the things of this world, but just as there is nothing from the outside that can defile me, there is nothing from the outside that can satisfy me. It is only when I accept that the void I feel in my heart can only be fulfilled by Jesus, I stop running from myself and begin running to Him.

Application
This week,  I will replace the time I spend listening to music with reading the Bible. 

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