When we gather together as a church this Sunday, Pastor Dave will preach a sermon and then many of us will go to our Growth Group either immediately following the service or later that evening. Eventually we will all go home, go to bed, and go on with the rest of our week as if nothing changed… Is this it? Is this the Christian life? Is this why Jesus came to this earth to die…just so that we can funnel through the doors of a building for three hours and then leave? Is this the life that Christ has to offer? The sad fact is that for many Christians (often times myself included) this is reality.
The past few weeks, I have had the new task of forming the Growth Group questions. The passages I have been studying and the passages Pastor Dave has been preaching on have truly been impacting my life. Since I started this task, there is one word that has been racing through my mind, beating in my heart, and pulsing through my veins. That word is CHANGE! Jesus did not come to this earth in order to save us just so that we can continue in a more comfortable, pleasant lifestyle. He SAVED us in order to CHANGE us.
When the word CHANGE is thrown around in Christianity, people tend to love the idea, but hate the reality. Change sounds so “amazing” and “uplifting”, but the reality of CHANGE is that it is often frustrating and difficult. We may start out so well when we try to CHANGE, but then we fail. So we try again, and then we fail again, and so on. It becomes a daunting and never-ending task. So we then do what comes natural to us, and we flip on our Christian Cruise Control and “enjoy” the ride. When this happens, that is when true failure occurs.
We must understand that CHANGE is not an event, but a process. True CHANGE takes faith in Christ, yielding to the Holy Spirit, and time. In order to succeed, we must make CHANGE a daily endeavor and not just a once-in-a-while event. Ephesians 4:22-24 says we must “renew our minds,” which means that we must CHANGE how we both view and live our lives. This is done by following James 1:21-22. In other words, we must not only hear the Word, but do what it says!