God calls His disciples into existence in order to reverse the natural order of things. When God told Abraham that his firstborn son, Ishmael, would become a “wild man,” Abraham immediately began to struggle against the natural course of Ishmael’s life and, by prayer, sought to bring his son over to the spiritual side. He was successful; the wild man” (Genesis 16:12, KJV) became “the father of … princes” (17:20).
That is God’s ministry for all disciples—to change wild men into princes, to turn the natural into the spiritual. How often parents complain, “My children aren’t spiritual.” Of course. It is our responsibility to make them spiritual. A pastor will wail. “My church is so unspiritual.” What else? That is the direction of the natural man; and wherever it is unopposed by spiritual forces, it will always be unspiritual. We should look on natural people, with their disobedience, perverseness, and indifference, not as incorrigible deviants, but as opportunities for grace. We should not condemn; we should deliver.
How encouraged I am by Hezekiah’s action: “He opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them” (2 Chronicles 29:3). He reopened what had been shut by his father, Ahaz, and repaired what had been broken. He relit the lamps that Ahaz had put out, and cleansed and reused the altar. That is my ministry—to reverse the natural trend. That is what Jesus did to Adam’s trend. That is what Jesus wants to do through me to help all sons and daughters of Adam. The story of Christ and His gospel is the redoing, remaking, and renewing of men. If Christ is alive in me, I will make spiritual reversals; the old will go and the new will come. How the church needs an army to make spiritual “reversals”!
“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Daily with the King 