We are not our own handiwork. Only God knows what we were fully intended to look like. Paul shares in Ephesians 2:10 that we are God’s handiwork. We are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared us in advance to do.
God wants you to reach your full potential. He intends for you to become the best version of yourself, a You 2.0. It won’t look like anybody else. Yet, it will be wonderful. God is more concerned with you reaching your full potential than even you are, and He is guiding that process every step of the way.
Many of us are familiar with two different versions of ourselves: the one God created us to be and the one that currently exists. Have you noticed a widening gap between the two? Many people think they can close the gap if they just try harder.
Especially at the beginning of the year, people are determined to read their Bible more, listen better, work harder, be nicer, pray more, and the list goes on and on. Then, when they fail at their chosen goal(s), they beat themselves up because they do not feel heroic enough in their spiritual efforts. The guilt begins and continues to increase, and they get tired. I do not mean just physically tired; I mean soul-tired.
Jesus made staggering promises about His ability to transform human lives into a new kind of life in John 7:37-39. “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.”
Paul was “confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion,” Philippians 1:6. Paul added in Philippians 2:13, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose.”
Lastly, 2 Corinthians 3:17 extols that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Freedom! That means I am free and you are free. It is all about freedom. Verse 18 continues, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” We do not have to hide anymore. We are transformed into God’s likeness with an “ever-increasing glory.” Not from me. Not from you. But “from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
Will you let the rivers of living water Jesus promised flow through you right now? Instead of exhaustion from trying harder, how would it feel to let God’s Spirit transform you from within? I encourage you to embrace the freedom and let the true You 2.0 come to life in 2025.
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By Elton DeMoraes, D.Min., president of the Texas Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
A version of this editorial appears in the January/February 2025 issue of the Southwestern Union Record. You can view it along with other Texas Conference stories by clicking here.
