Graduating from college feels like a relief from stress until you realize that now you have to go to work everyday.

Getting married, you circle the date and count down the days until you expect some glorious eschatological, paradisiacal breakthrough, then you feel the drudgery of having to change your life for this person.

Having a Baby, all you can think about is that due date when you will finally meet this new person, and when it comes you rest for about 30 seconds.

On one level each of these experiences make us feel like Lewis and Clark when they first summitted the Rocky Mountains, and honestly expected to find a river head that would carry them to the Pacific Ocean. Instead they saw only more mountains for as far as they could see. What they thought was their final climb, was only the beginning.

However, on a deeper lever there is a profound joy that comes with each of these new beginnings. The new freedom of your first job, the new passion of being a newlywed, the profound joy of being a new parent all inspire you to work out of love not drudgery.

A very similar experience comes upon a person when they become a Christian. The time before saving faith is usually marked with great conviction of sin, you feel dirty for what you have done and you feel helpless to make yourself any better. You look into the eyes of God expecting to be punished, and instead you find love. You receive joy unspeakable, you receive a freedom of conscience that you have never had before.

With that joy, you look back to yourself and you see there is work that needs to be done. God himself has come to live within you, and you, my friend, are no house fit for a king. So begins the grand renovation, when you become what God has elected, called and saved you to be. You become Holy, loving, gracious, gentle, joyful, faithful, kind and filled with self control.