Change
I read a book once entitled “Renewal of the Mind” by John Sanford. In it he discusses the transformation of being a lost sinner to a saved sinner or a Christian. We are taught to believe that once we become a Christian, all is well and we are saved from hell. Being saved is much more than just getting out of hell. It’s about transformation. Jesus said He makes all things new. Wow! Think of it. All our negative thoughts, emotions and actions will be made new. We think that when we become Christian that all that goes away and we live happily ever after. Not! God never intended for us to be evil in nature, but He didn’t stop it from happening. And all that evil nature is just what He wants to make new or get rid of. We can’t change one iota of ourselves without God. Everything about us needs to be surrendered to His will, not ours. Our will takes us where we really don’t want to be, makes us who we don’t really want to be and God will put people into our lives or arrange circumstances that irritate or anger us—on purpose. His purpose in doing this is to gently (although it doesn’t feel gentle at the time) bring us to him in complete repentance and surrender. Psalm 37:5 says to “commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him.” You can read over that and shrug it off, but think about it: your way of doing things, right or wrong; your way of handling anger, resentment and other such negative emotions. God wants these things in order to change them in us. He knows we sin and struggle with these things, but He waits for us to acknowledge that we are lost and hopeless without Him. How we deal with our ways will determine our future.
Letting go is one of the hardest things to do in life. From the day we’re born we start to form the idea of who we are. This is influenced mostly by what we see and hear every day, seven days a week, mainly from family, to start, other family members, teachers, etc. We form beliefs about ourselves based on all this information. A lot of times it’s negative stuff we tend to hold on to and feel “this is me”. We become what our childhood tells us and we carry that throughout our lives and some are never aware that most of it is a lie. We aren’t who are parents say we are when they accuse us, belittle us, humiliate us and abuse us verbally or otherwise. This identity causes us to shut up or shut out the real “me” of me. If we continue to believe who we think we are, we live a lie. This is what we have to be willing to let go of and allow God to remove those things in us that don’t belong. This is the “old self” that is really dead to sin if we are truly a Christian. This is a struggle and if we keep believing this, we will never see change at all. We get set in a behavioral pattern that we stay in because it is familiar, comforting.
Jesus came to give us life. He wants to give us His new life, but that’s what we struggle with the most. Habits are easy to form and hold on to, but letting go seems impossible some times. What you believe is what you will live. This is what He wants to change; to get rid of the old and bring the new life. The patterns of behavior we create will follow us unless we learn to think differently, get out of the rut we feel we are in or have created for ourselves. Our past has been the factor that formed our “now” and will become our future if we continue that same behavioral pattern. Change the pattern, change your life.
