“People Can Change”

BIBLE READING: Acts 13-16

                Have you ever watched a movie twice?  I don’t mean something like “Frozen” or a “Barney” movie that you turned on to keep you children occupied.  I mean, have you actually, willingly, watched a film twice? I guess we all have our favorites that we catch often like “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”.  As a young teenager, I can fondly remember going to the local Budget Video and picking up the fourth installment of the Rocky series cleverly entitled “Rocky IV”. I had never seen any of the Rocky movies because we did not have cable and had just recently purchased a Beta VCR (which cost over $800, if I remember correctly).  Rocky IV was not only the first film that made me weep for joy, it also gave me a huge adrenaline rush making me believe I could run a four-minute mile.  Other than giving me those unique emotions, it was the first movie that when I finished watching it, I immediately rewound the movie and watched it again.  The film had many memorable moments, but Rocky’s final speech at the end, defeating the Russian, gets me every time.   After the fight he says, "During this fight, I've seen a lot of changing, in the way you feel about me, and in the way I feel about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that's better than twenty million. I guess what I'm trying to say is, that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!" His point was, it doesn’t matter who you are or how strong your convictions might be, change is possible.  Acts 15 gives us a perfect example of that happening.  Earlier on in the ministry of Jesus, the Bible tells us that not even His brother believed in Him (John 7.1-6). One of those brothers that didn’t believe in Jesus was James.  When Jesus is resurrected from the dead, I Corinthians 15.7 tells us that Jesus specifically went to see James to visit Him before He ascended.  My guess is that something about the meeting with Jesus caused James to completely change his reasoning.  We know this because in Acts 15, James it a major player in the church in Jerusalem.  He is also the one responsible for writing the book of James.  The resurrection changed Him from being an unbeliever, to a believer.  The devotional thought for us today is this: the time you have lost in not believing in Jesus doesn’t matter, nor how wicked and sinful you may have been; when you come to understand the true nature of the resurrection, it has the power to change you.  If it changed James, it can change us as well.