Look at Zaccheus. He was a vacuous, selfish, money-grubbing, rich tax collector. Jesus said, "Come down, Zaccheus. This day I'm going to have lunch at your house. This day you are a son of Abraham. You are restored to your roots. Your story is restored." Zaccheus said, "If I have defrauded any man, I will restore to him fourfold. I will take half of my money and give to the poor." You know he was converted! Jesus touched his life. That's why, if you want to hang it on something, you can hang it on "if a man be in Christ, he is a new creature."

If you want a modern illustration of that, look at Chuck Colson. He was the Watergate conspirator, and he spent time in federal prison. He met Christ through the ministry of Billy Graham. God touched him, and changed his life. He has spent the rest of his life trying to bring some kind of redemption into the prison systems of the world. I read recently he had visited 6,000 prisons. He is the one who popularized what the Bible says when something happens to us — he was "born again."

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So take a look at your life. Look at the chapters you have in the past. Are you satisfied with the ones in your life? None of us are. I'm not satisfied with the ones in mine. We have an option. Those of us who have already called Jesus Christ into our lives and have responded to His grace in faith, have a chance to grow closer to Him and make sure our life is what He wants it to be. For those who sit back wondering, "How does this fit in with . . . ? How does your expression of the Christian faith compare with so-and-so's?" For those you who are doing that, you are coming at it the wrong way. The way you come at it is just to meet Jesus.

The more I read the Bible, the more I am impressed that there was very little theological discussion in the New Testament when people came to Christ. Nicodemus had some discussion with him but basically, it was a connection, a relationship that was affirmed, restored, and created when it happened. This is the way people's lives are changed, and this is the way their stories are changed.

Do you know what this means? It means that when your story is changed by Jesus, you no longer have to play the victim role. We love the victim role, "Poor me. Oh, me. Oh, my goodness. If only I had better parents. If we had only been born in another place in town. If I had just been able to go to that college instead of this college. If my wife had . . . If my husband had . . . " Those are all victim stances. Now we're walking around, wringing our hands, over the stock market. "The world is coming to an end. Henny Penny is reigning supreme." What we need to understand is that we wear the victim hat well. If a person be in Christ, he is a new creature and he doesn't have to be the victim any longer.

C. S. Lewis — who was changed radically by his experience with Jesus Christ — has a marvelous story of how you come in heart first, then your head straightens it out later. In his book Mere Christianity, he says you can take a horse out into the field and teach the horse to jump a fence. You can train a horse, take it to shows, and win prizes with it. But essentially, the horse is still a horse. But the Bible says that if the horse grew wings, started flying around and doing acrobatics in the sky, it wouldn't be a new and improved horse. It would be an entirely new creature on the face of this earth.