Tag Archives: Change

The Power to Change

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One of the sayings you hear a lot about Jesus in scripture is that He teaches with one that has authority. The wind and the waves obey Him. The religious leaders are shocked and confused by His teaching. The political leaders are left in silence by what He says. The spirits of evil are forced to leave when He commands them.

He doesn’t live, teach, heal, or care as someone “normal.” We all understand that. After all, He is the son of God. We get it. He comes forth in scripture as one called by God, enabled by God, who is the very Son of God.

He is one that has authority. He is one that has power. He is one that brings, above all, the power to change.

Listen to what we hear in Mark 1:27-28:

And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

Over and over again in scripture, we see Jesus bring the power to change. We see people encounter Jesus, and be changed. We see people convicted of sin, and repent. We see people healed by His touch, His word, His command. We see change occur wherever He goes. All throughout scripture, Jesus brings the power to change.

And He brings that power, not just in scripture, but in our lives as well. He brings the power to change.

We can change. We can be different. We don’t have to be the same. Really. That’s the power and the authority of Jesus. He can change us. He can save us. He can restore us.

He can bring hope, life, and peace. He really can change us. Really.

Today, let’s truly and honestly, give it to Him. Give Him the things that we need to change. That we want to change. That we want to see healing in.

He can do it. And He can do it in us. He is the Son of God. He is life. And He can change us.

Today, may we know the power of life. And may we allow Him to change us more into His likeness.

Transformed

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You were not created to stay the same. We, as Christians, we created to be changed. To be transformed. To be different. To be changed.

That is reassuring. Because none of us are perfect, none of us are as we ought to be, none of us have hit the exact mark that God would want us to hit.

We are all lacking, all imperfect, all as the old saying goes “missing the mark.”

That doesn’t mean that we should be satisfied with our imperfections. It doesn’t mean that all is perfect and we should be ok with where things are wrong. We shouldn’t.

Because we were not created for that. No matter where you are; no matter what has happend in your life; no matter what is going on, God has a plan for you that is more than you can dream or imagine. God has a plan for you that is bigger than your heart’s desire. God dream for you life and and peace and grace.

And God is going to transform you to bring it into being.

Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Our job is to be faithful. To read. To pray. To worship. To be part of His body and put ourselves in a position to be changed. And He will do the rest. He will change, transform and clean us up.

Today, be faithful. Follow Him. And He will have you where He needs you to be. God is good. You are loved. May He transform us and make us into His image!

Inside Out

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My ringtone is a song by Hillsong United called “From the Inside Out.” Every time someone calls me, it’s the song that I hear. It’s also my alarm sound for my alarm in the morning, so it’s the first thing I hear in the mornings, normally several times as I keep hitting snooze 🙂

That song is one of my favorites and it has a foundation in what we read here in Jeremiah 31:31-33.  Listen to what this text says:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

In this passage, the God is speaking through the prophet about the days that are to come. In the Old Testament, there is so much emphasis placed on the covenant. Israel is to keep it. They are to be obedient. They are to follow. They are to to obey.

Over and over in scripture, God tells the people, if you do your part, I’ll do my. (Or course we read over and over again in scripture, that God is faithful, in spite of how unfaithful the people are). But, in spite of God’s faithfulness, the people never keep the covenant. They always wander away. They always choose wrong. They always do wrong. They always choose their way instead of God’s way.

So, God says this. There will come a time when instead of giving you laws to command, I am going to write the law on your heart. Instead of it being about your actions, it will be about your heart.

Not that your actions won’t be important. Because they will. We will still have “stuff” we are supposed to be doing (loving, serving, caring, and so many others) but these things come because of the change that God has made on our heart.

We are an inside out religion. God changes our hearts. And that in turn changes our lives. We are changed from the inside out.

So, today, when the question is ask, does God have your actions, the first question asked is this. Does He have your heart?

Today, may we be obedient, from the inside out

Follow Me – Love Podcast

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The sermon podcast for Sunday, September 18, 2011 is up on Asbury Church’s website.  This is the next sermon in our series about discipleship and the transformed life entitled “Follow Me.” This deals with following Jesus to Love and we examine the life of John. We look at Luke 9: 51-56, 1 John 4: 7-11, and Romans 2:4. In these we see how following Jesus changed John.  You can listen to it by clicking here, or you can listen to it here on this blog by clicking below. And, as always, you can subscribe to my sermon podcasts through iTunes.

Follow Me – Hope and Change Podcast

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The sermon podcast for Sunday, August 21, 2011 is up on Asbury Church’s website.  This is the second sermon in our series about discipleship and the transformed life entitled “Follow Me.”  It is about following Jesus to a life of hope and change. It deals with the life of Matthew and the text is Matthew 9: 9-13.  You can listen to it by clicking here, or you can listen to it here on this blog by clicking below. And, as always, you can subscribe to my sermon podcasts through iTunes.

A Change is Coming

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Saul was a bad dude. Really, he was a bad dude.

He persecuted the church. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. He was out to do as much as he could do to destroy the church and destroy the movement of God.

Listen to what is said of Saul in Acts 9:

Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers.

Paul was determined to stop this new movement of Christianity.

So, Acts 9 tells us how he sets out to go to Damascus to destroy what was happening. It tells how he was going to drag the Christians back to Jerusalem and see them persecuted. He is out to stop this. And he will not be stopped in his mission of destruction.

Except for what happens later in chapter 9

As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, lord?” Saul asked. And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

He has his plan. But the Lord has a different plan. Not only is His plan to stop Saul from doing what he was going to do. His plan was to change Saul.

He was going to change Saul the persecutor into Paul the Apostle. He was going to take the one that was trying to kill the church and change him into the one who was going to spread the good news of Jesus Christ across the world.

He was going to change Saul and use Saul for His glory.

He will do the same for you. A change is coming. You don’t have to be like you’ve always been. A change is coming.

God has a plan for you. God has a vision for you. God wants to use you.

If He can use Saul for amazing things, He can use you for amazing things.

A change is coming. Believe it. Live it. Cling to it. God is at work. He will change you.

Today, may we let Him do His work in our lives.

A change is coming. May we know the power of the change of God.

A Change is coming. . . . slowly

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As I was reading through part of John this morning, I read over Jesus’ calling of Peter.  It is found in Chapter 1:

42 Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus. Looking intently at Simon, Jesus said, “Your name is Simon, son of John—but you will be called Cephas” (which means “Peter”).

One of the things we see in Scripture is that when some people come to God, their name is changes – Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul.

Why? What does God change someone’s name?

In the days of the Bible, your name was more than just what people called you . . . . it was who you were. It represented something deeper about you.

So, when God changed your name, He wasn’t just changing what people called you, He changed who you were.

A change is coming.

We want that in our lives, don’t we. We want to be different. We want to change old habits, we want to start new ones. We want to be different.  We want to change for the better.

But, it’s hard.  Things come slowly.  We fall back into old habits and old ways.

We want change on a dime. We want things happen quickly, we want to be a different person at this exact moment.

It doesn’t always happen that way. Change in our lives doesn’t always come quickly. Sometime it slowly.

So, what do we? We be faithful. Each second, each moment, each hour, each day.

We are faithful. We do what we should do. We pray. We read. We fellowship. We worship. We do our part.

And, slowly, you know what happens? We change. We are different. We are transformed.

Sometimes, we change very quickly. Most times, it’s a process.

God wants to change you today. He wants you to have new life today.  He wants you to know what’s most important today.

So be faithful.  Today, and each day. And we will find that we have grown more than we would ever realize. Be faithful. And know God will do His part.

Is This Not the Man?

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This morning, as I was reading and praying, I was thinking about how hard it is to change.

We all have things in our lives we’d like to change.  We all have things in our lives we’d like to do different.

But, if you’re like me, you find that change is hard. We fall into routines, we do things the way that we’ve always done them, we pick up bad habits that are hard to drop.

And we can think, well, this is just the way that it is.  I won’t be able to change.  It is as it is, and this is just the way that it’s going to be.

I was thinking about change this morning, and I read this passage in Acts 9:

19b For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, 20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” 21 All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?”

The people ask of Paul, “Is this not the man that. . . ?”

Paul had changed.  But, if we remember the story of Paul, it wasn’t that he had enough will power to change. It wasn’t that he wanted it badly enough to change.  It wasn’t his desire to be changed that changed him.

It was God.

He had an encounter with God, and God changed him.  He was knocked off his donkey and the Lord changed him.

It was God that did it.  Not Paul.

Perhaps we are frustrated today because we are trying to do it ourselves and finding that we can’t.  Perhaps we finding that we don’t have enough will power. Perhaps we fall back into the old habits and feel guilty.  And feel like we can’t do.

And really, guess what?

We can’t do it.

Alone.  We can’t change ourselves by ourselves.

But God can.

What do you want to change today?  Give it to God. And give it again, and again, and again, and again.  Give it to Him each second, each minute, each hour.

Give it over and over again.

You will take it back.  I do, we all do.  Give it back.

God changed Paul to the point where folks couldn’t believe it was him.

He is still God. And He can still do it.

What do you want to change today?  Give it to Him.  Again and again.  And, He will change us.  For our good and for His glory.

Give it to Him.

Mondays are Awesome!

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One of the things in life that is most disheartening, to me at least, is when folks feel like giving up.  When people feel like their is no hope. When we lose that sense that things can get better, can change, can be different.

In short, when people want to give up. When people think that there is no reason to hope.

We hear, oh, but things can change. Things can be different. It doesn’t have to be like that.

And, when we are broken, we say – impossible. That can’t happen.  It won’t change.

If that is where you are on this Monday morning, listen to the word of Jesus from Matthew 21:

21 Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. 22 You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.”

Things don’t have to be the same. They don’t have to be like they’ve always been.

I know it’s Monday, and we hate Mondays.

But this Monday, this Monday is a new day!  Each day is a new day. Each day, through faith, we get to start over. Each day is new. Full of new life, new hope, new grace.

This is a new day.  It does have to be like a aways. Things can change. Things can be different.  It isn’t impossible.

Now, through ourselves and our strength, yeah, nothing will change.

But, through God. Through faith. Through grace.  Through His life, things can change. Things can be different. There is hope. There is life. There is a change for a new start.

Today, through faith.

Today, yes even today. Even this morning. There is a chance for a fresh start.

Things can be different.  Things can change. Nothing is impossible.

Mondays are awesome!  Through God’s grace, each new day is awesome.

Go out and live a fresh, new, loved life.  For today is a new day.  Nothing is impossible for God.

Nothing!

Pride

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The suggested Old Testament readings the past few days have been from Proverbs. I’ve always loved Proverbs and Psalms.  Dr. Frank Pollard, one of the best preachers I’ve ever known, used to always tell folks to read three Psalms and a chapter of Proverbs a day, it would really make a difference. And I believe that to be true.

As I praying today, I started thinking about pride, and the famous passage we know from Proverbs popped in my mind Proverbs 16:18

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

It hit me this morning one of the ways that pride brings forth destruction in my life. It looks like this.

I need to be a better person. I need to be more faithful.  I need to do more.  I need to change.  I need to be different. I need to. . . whatever.

How is that prideful? Those look like good, Christian statements.  How is that pride?

It’s pride in that I’ve mistakenly though I can do it. I just need to bow up.  I just need to do more. I can do it.  I just haven’t.  But I can.

No, I can’t.  Pride fools us in to thinking we are stronger than we really are. Pride fools us into thinking we are smarter than we really are. Pride makes us think that if we just want it enough, we can do it!

That’s not what the Bible teaches.  The Bible reminds us that through God, all things are possible.  Yes, we can change. We can be different. We can do better. We can be new. We can be a new creation. We can experience all these things.

But, not through our strength and will. But through God’s grace.

Pride makes us think we can do it.

And, as long as we think we can do it, we will never be able to do it.

Only through His grace can we do any of it. Only through His grace can we be new and different. Only through His grace can we change. Only through His grace can we live.

The pride goes before the fall. May we not be prideful today. May we remember that our true strength comes not from ourselves.

But from God.