1. Little by little old pieces are removed and replaced. It can take years of careful study and dedicated prayer to put good pieces into place so that they fall in when the rotten original material is gone. In a way, you harbor the wrongness until you learn the truth. This is a good and steady and biblical way to change. People see the growth. People believe it's sincere, because it makes sense. The apostles did this while following Jesus during His ministry. They didn't have an automatic understanding of the eternal significance of the words of Christ. They had to soak in it for years, and witness miracles, and see Christ crucified and raised from the dead before they understood.
2. A cataclysm liquefies all the old, dead, rotten lower-level and whatever was above suddenly and absolutely takes it's place by force. Typically, this is not a good way to change your life. Usually the things placed above the filth in your life is more filth. In rare instances, you can learn masses of biblical truth but still be too pig-headed to understand the implications of not implementing it. Usually this doesn't happen because if you're not interested in hearing about how God can change your life and why He would want to, you remove yourself from the situations wherein you might learn those things.
Paul experienced this sort of radical transformation in his life on the road to Damascus. Christ, after He was dead, buried, raised, and ascended, appeared to Paul and changed his life by force. Paul didn't wake up that morning searching for the truth about Christ. Paul woke up that morning with a desire to kill Christians. In fact, he was on the road to Damascus for the intent of killing the Christians there. Christ grabbed hold of his heart and changed it in an instant. Christ removed his guilty flesh and Paul was reborn. So this too is a good and biblical way of change.
I feel I'm a mixture of the two. I've been soaked in Jesus my whole life, I've made some good decisions (which were often followed by a contradictory bad decision), I've sung songs about salvation, I've accepted Christ as my savior (more than once), but I could not shake the sin from my life. (I'm not talking complete removal of sin here. I'm a man, therefore I am a sinner. I'm talking damaging, recurring, unrepentive sin.) I was a slave to my flesh and to the desires of it, not because Christ wasn't strong enough to remove me from my sin (because He can do all things), but because I just didn't get what it meant to be in Christ. I didn't see the treasure that Christ is. He had been an implement in the preserving of my "easy" and "satisfied" life. (Things were going great, why did I need any more of God in my life? He'd probably just make things difficult.)
I re-listened to a sermon that I first heard in Atlanta in January of 2007 by a guy named Francis Chan (he was preaching on the luke-warm church in Laodicea from Revelation 3:14-16) for probably the 10th time. (I wish I had a way that you could hear it. It's truly life changing if you actually listen. It's on iTunes. It's called Passionately Loving God In a Luke-Warm Church, or something close to that anyway.) Part of the sermon talks about the sacrifices people make for the people they love without considering them sacrifices. He gave his relationship to his wife as an example of how we do this.
After only dating his eventual wife for a few weeks, he took her car from her and bought new tires and had it cleaned and detailed (which costs hundreds of dollars), but he was just so excited about the love that he had found in her that the hundreds of dollars were inconsequential. It wasn't a labor to lavish her with gifts. It wasn't work or even unpleasant to "inconvenience" himself for her. It was love, and sacrifices for the one you love do not feel like sacrifices. It is the same with Christ. If you truly love Christ, you would give everything you had or ever could get in exchange for Him, because He is worth it.
Philippians 3:8 says:
...I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.I realized that I was keeping things back in my attempt a a trade for God. I wanted other things more than I wanted Christ. Christ is a free gift to those who want Him more than anything. I am free (for now) to give all for Christ and call myself glad, but it will take constant prayer and attention to my heart to keep my aim true.
So, no...this is not forced. This is salvation, and it's just very exciting.
1 comment:
No. You don't sound like you're forcing it. The genuineness of it comes through very clearly.
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