Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, April 15th.

Ephesians chapter 2 tells us that when we enter this world, we come as sinners, by nature,

separated from God, and deserving his wrath. That's a sobering diagnosis, a desperate condition,

but thankfully, it's not a permanent one. When you yield your

life to him, his transforming grace changes your story from wrath to mercy, from death to life,

from hopeless to redeemed. God says that he has predestined you and me to be conform to the likeness of his son, which

means that God's ultimate will for every single believer is to be conformed to the likeness

of his son.

He begins that process initially when you and I are transformed by his grace at the experience which we call salvation of the new birth.

That is the beginning of that conforming us to the likeness of Christ.

And so all the rest of our life, we are moved and directed and influenced in that direction.

Now, there are a lot of things that influence our life and influences the changes in our life.

For example, our heredity,

our parents, our grandparents, the way we come along. And then, of course, there's our environment,

the kind of atmosphere in which we grow up in. Then there's the training that we have in school

and so forth. And then, of course, the decisions we make. We're all the composite of all of those

things. And we're sort of the the composite of all of those things and we

sort of the sum total of all that, our heredity and our environment, our training, and the

decisions that we've made. But the most powerful influence in the life of the believer is not

any of those things. The most powerful influence in the life of the believer is the grace

of God, the transforming grace of God. As you and I live day by day by his grace and in his grace,

you and I can say with the Apostle Paul, by the grace of God, I am what I am. I want you to turn,

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