Page 19 - eLamdag June 2020

God’s Change Agents
Kuya Ren Sanapo
The first two paragraphs of BCBP’s
mission statement says a lot about to
say about change:
- we are committed to being change
agents in the market place
- our first goal in pursuing changes in the marketplace is to “assure more and more” that business dealings and practices in the companies we work in are “imbued with justice, honesty, and integrity”
- our second goal is to “being about genuine development of our country that will benefit all”
- we accomplish this by, among others, a process of on-going personal conversion
- and by evangelization of business people and professionals.
There are three ways we can work as agents of change.
First, we can continue to change ourselves. Can you remember how you changed when you first accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, and committed to follow him? Many of us were passionate about our conversion, and started showing changes in our behavior right away. We became less irritable, more organized, kinder, or spent more time with our families, etc. For others, the changes showed only after some time. In all of us, these changes happened with the inspiration and help of the Holy Spirit.
Are you continuing your efforts to become more like Jesus? If so, what changes have you made in your behavior lately? Do you hear the Holy Spirit guiding you, in your prayers, Bible reading, circumstances, or through other people, towards the changes that God wants you to make?
Let me tell you one of the recent changes I had to make, lately. I have been working from home, depending on electronics to connect with the office. I got irritated every time my daughter interrupted me. Once while I was working late, a Bible app brought up the verse of the day - about laying down one’s life. I read it, then continued working. But a part of my mind processed that verse. Suddenly, it hit me: if I could not even lay down my work for my daughter, how could I lay down my life? Since then I have set aside time for my little girl.
The changes we have to make in our personal life and behavior are part of our continuing repentance - our turning away from sinful ways to God’s ways. St Paul said we should “put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:22-24). And so we discern and make the changes that God wants us to make in ourselves, now and for the rest of our lives - this is what our mission statement calls“on-going personal conversion”.
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