A look at Jesus' healing of the blind man in John 9. We'll see how an encounter with Jesus can completely change everything you thought you knew about yourself and your future. We'll also be challenged to serve as a witness to others of Christ's power in our lives.

We can experience transformation when we embrace the ordinary and when we trust in God. Just like how Jesus changed water into wine and took something ordinary and made it extraordinary, He wants to do the same in our ordinary lives.

The good news of God’s saving grace is that your life is not the sum total of your past. The Bible teaches us that God extended his amazing grace to us through Jesus, and that this grace holds incredible promise, hope, and peace. We all have a past. We have made mistakes. We have messed up. We have had to deal with the consequences of our decisions. We have hurt and been hurt. We have felt the sting of disappointment. The unsettledness of frustration. The pain of brokenness. Still. The promise of the gospel is that your future does not have to follow the path of your past. You do not need to continue in the direction you have been going. Your next step can change everything.

Transformation is the act or process of changing completely. As Christians, we have already experienced a supernatural transformation by accepting Jesus. However, as we look at the life of Peter, we see how God continued a transformative work in his life transforming him from a humble fisherman to the leader of the early church. Like Peter, God sees the potential in each one of us and through the power of the Holy Spirit works to transform us to bring glory to his kingdom.

So you gave your life to Jesus. You trusted him for salvation. He forgave you and freed you from the power of sin in your life. What’s next? In a word: transformation. When we come to Jesus, he changes our lives, and he keeps changing our lives for our whole lives. This transformation requires our cooperation, results in very good things, and gives us a completely different and better perspective on ourselves and others.

How are we to respond to the brokenness and pain in our world? If you asked the Apostle Paul, he may simply respond with one word: “Jesus.” In our own strength we are stuck under the power of sin and headed towards judgement, but through Jesus God has done what we couldn’t do—he has intervened in history to save us and renew all of creation. Now, he invites us to respond to him in faith and to let him transform our lives and our world through the power of his Spirit.

Paul’s final words to the Roman church reveal an incredibly diverse church—men and women, rich and poor, and multiple ethnic groups. In the midst of this Kingdom diversity, however, Paul sternly warns the Romans to be careful of those who would want to take unity too far, plainly telling them to stay away from those who create divisions by teaching things opposed to scripture. Paul lands his letter by giving glory to God for his wise and beautiful gospel plan, reminding each of us of the ongoing work to share the good news of Jesus with all nations.

What’s God’s next step for you? As Paul begins to wrap up his letter to the Roman church, he takes time to remind them about his personal calling, to share his ministry plans, and to invite their continued partnership in his work. In his words, we can feel the honest tension between his desire for deep fellowship with other believers and his calling from God to continue to pioneer new territory for the Kingdom.

Our world desperately needs hope, and a Bible-believing, Jesus-imitating, Spirit-powered church is precisely the way that God intends to bring it. In the last bit of the main body of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he challenges us to take Christian unity serious, and get to work in the Kingdom-critical priorities of worship, community and mission.

In today’s passage, Paul challenges us to realize that not all thing are worth fighting over for believers. There is a category of things that are “disputable matters,” in which he encourages us to try to understand, but also to give grace to others who understand them differently. However, how do we know what is in this category and what isn’t? And how do we live this out in a complex world? Today’s passage echoes the old saying: “In essentials, unity, In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.”