Mark 7:24-37, James 2:1-10,14-17
Can the leopard change his spots? No, but God can change them.
Can we make fundamental, long-term changes to our selves, our natures, our characters? No, but God can, with our help.
You thought I would say we can with God’s help, but, no, I’m sticking to God can with our cooperation.
Last week I talked about coming to Jesus and how it has to be on his terms. One of the wonderful, things that we get when we come to Jesus is that his Spirit comes to us and lives in us and begins a makeover. It is true that God loves us just as we are. It is also true that God loves us too much to leave us as we are. We need a makeover and that’s what we get. Thus we become more and more like Jesus as we go along. Some of these changes are gradual and some are radical. All are transforming.
When the Syrophoenician woman in the Mark reading persuaded Jesus to drive the demon out of her child both mother and daughter were transformed. When Jesus healed the deaf and dumb man so that he could hear and speak the man was transformed and the people were mind-blown. They couldn’t stop talking about Jesus’ transforming work.
James certainly expects Jesus’ followers to be transformed. He expects selfish, judgemental people to become generous, compassionate people from following Jesus. The expectation is that those who follow Jesus will become like him.
When I began following Jesus I began changing. After 3 years my brother quite took the wind out of my sails when he said that he had not seen any change in me! I was embarrassed. I was aware of changes on the inside which apparently weren’t showing on the outside.
Over the years I know I have changed, significantly. I used to be very truth-centred. Things were black and white, right and wrong. I was into winning or losing arguments. I have become much more people-oriented. Readier to listen. Winning the argument is no longer the vital thing. That’s partly (largely?) because Truth is bigger than me and God can convince people much more readily and effectively than I can, and my finely tuned point may not be perfect truth anyway. These days I’m more than ever prepared to trust people to the Holy Spirit.
The road to transformation, according to the Bible, starts with the renewing of our minds (Rom.12:2). I think this means substantial change. Two aspects to this. 1: set your mind on the things of the Spirit (Col.3:2). 2: think about those things that are good, righteous, true (Phil.4:8). Don’t entertain thoughts that are bad or even dubious.
For the HolySpirit to be able to transform us we must be cooperative. We must be willing for it to happen. The Spirit will only deal with the things we allow him to deal with. This is what we mean when we talk of surrendering this and that to the Spirit’s control. It’s a lot like submitting to surgery – putting yourself in someone else’s hands – but actually more like getting treatment from your doctor. We have to take the medicine prescribed or it won’t have any effect. Someone has said that God will free us from our enemies but not from our friends. The woman in the story did not want the evil spirit around so Jesus sent it packing. The deaf man wanted to hear and Jesus made it so. Jesus invited Peter and others to follow him. They did and they were changed. Another time, Jesus invited a rich man to follow him. He didn’t follow and didn’t change.
I have games on my computer that I play sometimes. They take a minute to load so I have to make sure I have the time. Occasionally after I’ve finished my work for the day I might play a couple of hands of solitaire to wind down. But then I got some games on my iPad and I was in trouble. They take no time to load and can be played endlessly. I talked it over with Jesus and, in the end I took the easy way out and deleted them. I removed the temptation!
There have been other things that have troubled me for some time. I’ve prayed to be able to consistently resist temptation but haven’t managed it. That was until I realised that I didn’t want the change enough. Once I was able to pray, ‘God I hate doing that.’ I was able to be free of it. The thing to pray for is a hatred of the sin and a strong desire to do what is right. There’s not much point asking to get rid of a habit until we really do want to see it gone. Then, if it’s a habit, don’t expect it to just disappear, replace the bad habit with a good one. The temptations you face, everybody faces. And God has promised he will always provide the means to escape. Temptation means facing the door of sin; resisting means keeping sin’s door closed.
So a good prayer is, “God, what do you want to change in me?”
With your close friends a good question to ask is, “What is God talking to you about?” or “What is the Spirit working on with you?” It’s all part of encouraging one another to be willing participants in God’s makeover programme
This is what we are talking about when we are talking about discipleship – progressively changing to become more like Jesus. More about this next week.