4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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0:00.0 | Well, God was at work in my life when He saved me, amen. |
0:09.0 | But was God at work in my life before I came to Christ? |
0:12.9 | And if so, how should we talk about God's work in our lives before conversion? |
0:19.3 | What does that season of my life before Christ tell the world about who God is? |
0:27.3 | I've never really considered this to be honest, and I suspect most of us haven't given that much thought either. |
0:34.0 | Well, the Apostle Paul did, and he spoke with specificity about what his pre-conversion life displayed about the character of God. |
0:42.8 | Here's the sharp question from a listener named Sean who lives in Canada. |
0:46.8 | Hello, Pastor John. I have a question concerning the life that we as believers in Christ lived before we came to faith. |
0:53.9 | Paul writes about his life before conversion as being one of the largest opponents of God for somebody 113. |
1:00.6 | He later says his life as an unbeliever was used to display God's perfect patience going from a persecutor of Christians to a Christian for somebody 116. |
1:12.6 | God was revealing himself in Paul's pre-conversion life, his patience. |
1:18.3 | So looking at Paul's testimony, my question is this, was God present and active in our lives when we were unbelievers? |
1:24.9 | And should we, too, speak of what our pre-conversion life reveals about the character of God? |
1:31.8 | Because quite honestly, that's something I really don't do. |
1:35.4 | The answer to both of those questions is yes. |
1:38.8 | God is always at work in this world in everybody's life. |
1:46.1 | Ephesians 1-11, he works all things according to the counsel of his will. |
1:52.7 | And when we come to Christ, we are given a perspective on that prior work which is true and helpful. |
2:06.1 | It does cause for thankfulness in us, thankfulness, and it's a cause for a benefit to others. |
2:15.6 | Others we experience it as worship and we experience it hopefully as witness. |
2:23.2 | Before we turn to Christ, there is so to speak, a veil over our eyes so that we can't interpret what's happening in our lives in its proper relationship to God before we're a Christian. |
2:35.7 | In a profound sense, we are blind to what God is doing in our lives. |
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