Change

NB is short for the Latin, Nota Bene!

Which in English means Note Well and is usually put next to something that is very important and needs special attention.

This series is about some very important things that you must note well and pay special attention to.

Very important because they come from God’s Word, are very important to him and should be very important to us.

But for them to become important to us we need the help of the Holy Spirit.

[Pray]

Week 1: “truth”. Week 2: “salvation”.

The very important idea that I want us focus on this week is … CHANGE!

The act or process in which something becomes different.

Research has shown that most people are resistant to change [Bell graph)

That is a big problem for Christians and the church.

Why?

The Christian’s life is all about change!

To start, becoming a Christian is radical change. You become a different person. Remember the passage we looked at last week? 2 Corinthians 5: 17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

The call to become a Christian is a call (in the bible) to repent and believe. Which literally is a call to change your thinking (repent), to think differently about sin and salvation. A call to change your thinking about that and to believe what God says about it. Which is why repentance is often illustrated as turning around (illustrate).

So, becoming a Christian is a massive change … but change doesn’t end there. Becoming a Christian is the beginning of a life of ongoing change.

So much so that the bible uses the language of human physical growth to talk about spiritual growth … and the key to understanding both is that there is no growth without change.

[PP] That doesn’t become that without that. (the 2 are different)

And this is also true of growth as a Christian. When you are “born again” you spend the rest of your life changing, becoming different to what you start out as. You mature and grow up.

1 Peter 2: 2 “Like new-born infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation”.

Every day we are changing from our own sinful (but saved) selves to become more and more like Jesus, which is very different from how we start out.

Every day in every circumstance God is at work in his children to change them to become more and more like Jesus his Son. Romans 8: 28 – 29, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”

Another word for this kind of change is transformation.

And the Bible says that one of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing, daily tasks is to transform us into the image of the glorious Lord … 2 Corinthians 3: 18, “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.”

To resist this kind of daily change is to resist the Holy Spirit and that cannot be healthy.

Another angle to this is found in the idea of ongoing sanctification (the process of becoming holier [different]). It’s all about change.

Ephesians 4: 22 – 24, “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” And this sanctification, putting off and on to be holy (different from the world) requires daily change for as long as you live.

Thankfully we don’t have to guess what all this change in thinking and living looks like. God has given us his word.

The bible explains how we must grow up, mature, be more like Jesus, grow in holiness … how we must change, be different.

The bible is God’s personal, radical, change agenda for us.

The passage we saw earlier, 1 Peter 2: 2 “Like new-born infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation”.

You might also remember these passages from the first talk on truth (and the bible as truth)

• 2 Timothy 3: 16 – 17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work”
• John 17: 17 “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”

And the bible is not only our change agenda, it is also the Holy Spirit’s agenda to work in us and change us.

Having said that, if everything is always changing, and certainly, this world is, how can we have any peace and stability?

Thankfully God has given us some things that never change:

• Himself. Malachi 3: 6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
• His word. 1 Peter 1: 24 – 25, “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

But you are not one of those unchanging things, nor is your life.

And so, while you can thankfully anchor yourself to the unchanging bedrock that is God and his word, you and your life will continue to change in all areas by God’s grace, for your good, growth and godliness.

The secret to a peaceful, fulfilled, wise and God pleasing life is:

• To not try and change what God has made unchangeable
• To not resist change in the areas that God wants to change … which is all areas other than God and his word

So, clearly…

Change is very important to God

But is it very important to you?

Or do you fight it in areas that you should not be fighting it?

• “Oh, Mike, I’m too old for all that.”
  • No, you are not. It is very clear that God’s plan for us is to change and grow as long as we live. You will not find any age as an excuse for not growing. In fact, in the bible it seems that the older you get the more significant your growth and influence is.
• “But I have always done things like this.”
  • Yes, you have and that is part of the problem.
  • You need to change and grow and experience all that God has waiting for you beyond the excuses.
• “Mike, if you knew my circumstances, you would see why I don’t like change.”
  • Maybe I would. But God uses all your circumstances to grow and change you to be more like Jesus which is the point of your Christian life.
• “But you don’t understand. I am genuinely fearful of change.”
  • Maybe I don’t understand. But God does. And some of your best growth as a Christian will be when you (in faith) act to embrace change, irrespective of your fear, because you trust God and his word. It really pleases God when you do what he wants even when fearful. And he promises to help you do this. Actually, we are all fearful of change in one way or another.
• “What really scares me about change is the prospect of unintended consequences. What if I do something that makes my life worse than it is now?”
  • You are right, we don’t know what the future holds. But that is true whether we change or not.
  • The great thing is God knows what the future holds. He has planned it. And whatever the future does hold, let’s go into it doing what he wants, not what makes us comfortable and will leave us with regret.
• “Actually Mike, I used to like change when I was younger and didn’t have a family. But now I have to live more wisely. Too much change scares my family.”
  • Sure, some change is not helpful.
  • If you keep unhelpfully chopping and changing your job… if your moods are so up and down that people don’t like being around you… if you do such dodgy things with your finances that you are constantly having to change houses and towns… then, yes, live more wisely.
  • But when it comes to going out on a limb for Christ and the gospel and your spiritual growth it is not wisdom to scale back on that.

• “What kind of change are you actually talking about?”
  • In your particular case I don’t know.
  • But what I am saying is that as you read your bible, listen to sermons, talk about God’s word with others and it becomes clear that something in your thinking and living needs to change, then do it. Even if it is scary.
  • But make sure you get more than one opinion on whether you have correctly understood what the bible is actually saying.   
• “Mike, I don’t deal well with change. It is what it is, I am what I am. I was born this way. I can’t change.”
  • It is true, very few of us deal well with change, but we can change, all of us.
  • Just think about it for a moment. You were also born a sinner, unable to change that (it was what it was) … But God… God changed you. And that same God, by his Holy Spirit, through his word can keep on changing you.
  • You just have to step out in faith, and it will happen. No matter how you feel about it. And when you make your move, you will find that God makes his and over time your feelings may catch up. But even if they never do, you will still know it is right and reap the blessing of that.
  • And when you say you can’t change. You actually have changed in many ways. It’s just that you want to change on your own terms and in ways that you can control. Well, that’s playing God. Rather trust that God knows better and change in the way he wants you to. It always works out better that way.
• “Mike, change makes me very unhappy … and surely God wants me to be happy … so maybe he would cut me slack in the change department?”
  • God does want you to be happy, but he loves you too much to ever cheat you of the blessings that come from growth, change and holiness.

Imagine if a caterpillar managed to convince itself that going through all that change to become a butterfly was too scary, too much of a schlepp, to risky, too painful. And that staying in a worm-like state was the best for it.

Well if it did it would not experience the awesome transformation that God had planned for it too experience. And that would be tragic as it would miss out on the blessing and purpose of transformation.

For Christians, changing their lives in obedience to God and his word brings the most awesome spiritual growth, blessing, purpose and reward.

We must embrace it as God’s good plan for our lives and stop working against the Holy Spirit on this. we must step out in faith and change what he wants us to change.

In fact, we must learn to embrace all change that happens to us as part of God’s purpose for us, even when it makes no sense at the time.

I think that our willingness to constantly embrace growth and change is directly proportionate to how much God will use us in his kingdom.