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CURRENT RADIO SERIES Destiny   CURRENT TV SERIES Destiny

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. --2 Corinthians 5:17 If you walk into any bookstore today or browse an internet bookseller, you’ll find volume upon volume of self-improvement books…books about how to change and improve your life. So many of us fall into the trap of thinking that changing our jobs…changing our appearance…or changing our environment will make us happy.  But it just isn’t true! All of these external changes may temporarily improve your life…they may better your life for a time…but none of them can change your life.  You may move around.  You may change cars.  You may even change jobs.  But you know what?  Wherever you go, it’s the same old you, right? It’s not that your circumstances or your surroundings need to change.  It’s that your heart that needs to change.  It’s your heart that needs a new birth. The Bible is pretty clear when it talks about our hearts.  In Jeremiah 17:9, it says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.”  The heart, according to the Bible, is not good! Which means your heart needs a spiritual transformation.  I’m not talking about a resolution…promising to be better, do better, or live better.  I’m talking about a revolution! It’s something so radical, so dramatic, that it’s like beginning life all over again!  It’s a new beginning!  It’s an inward change!  Your heart undergoes a spiritual transformation when God takes it and transplants it with His love and His heart. So my challenge to you today is…let God transform your heart.  Realize that no external change can truly make you joyful or fulfilled.  Only a heart transformed by God will.  So let Him create a new beginning in you today! A Desire to See God by Dr. Paul Chappell “And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way.” Luke 19:1–4 In 2009 police in Utah received several phone calls reporting a car that was driving erratically. When an officer got close to the vehicle, the driver pulled to a stop, jumped out and ran inside a nearby house. The guilty driver was just seven years old! When police entered the home, the boy was explaining to his father that he had taken the keys and driven off in the car because he did not want to go to church that morning. There are times when our relationship with God is not what it should be and we have no desire for His presence. But when we are walking in fellowship with Him, there is nothing sweeter than the sense that He is near to us. The main thing that comes between us and intimate fellowship with God and with other Christians is sin. Whether it is a sin that we are clinging to and do not want to give up or whether it is guilt that we should no longer be carrying because we have confessed and forsaken a sin in the past, there is a real division that comes in our relationship with God because of sin. This has been true ever since the Fall in the Garden of Eden: “And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:9–10). Today’s Growth Principle:  If our hearts are not eager for time spent with God and His people, it is a sign that something is wrong in our lives.