Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.
A few years ago now, I attended my 30th high school reunion. Since my family moved right after I graduated – it was pretty much the first time I had been back to my hometown in all those years.
I remember being oddly nervous as I drove up to the house where the first gathering was to be held. Would people remember me? Would they even recognize me? Would I recognize them? How did I look? It felt like Junior High all over again!
I walked into the house and found my way to the back deck – where a number of classmates had already gathered. As I tentatively approached a group sitting at a picnic table – one woman looked up, pointed her finger knowingly at me, and said – “Jim Michilak!”
I said, “Uh, no.”
Undeterred, she tried again; “Lee Benedict!”
I said, “No, I’m Brian Coffey”
Complete blank stare.
Then she recovered and we politely introduced ourselves – but I really wanted to say, “I don’t recognize you either – so we’re even!”
But, as you know if you’ve ever been back to a class reunion, the whole weekend was a study in change!
30 years has a tendency to do that!
Some of my classmates appeared to have changed for the better; and some seemed to have changed, well, for the worse!
We all know that some change is easy – some change just happens naturally. Like hair turning gray; it’s a change, but I don’t have to put much effort into making it happen. The same is true with gaining a little weight, or looking more “mature.”
At my reunion I kept seeing people that I vaguely recognized – but, because of the changes mentioned above, I wanted to say, “What happened to your face!?” It occurred to me that they probably wanted to ask me the very same question!
All, that is, except the former cheerleader who married a plastic surgeon – but that’s a story for a different time!
But while some change comes naturally, other kinds of change are profoundly unnatural and even unexpected. I remember one classmate who was so painfully shy while we were all in school that he barely spoke at all. Thirty years later we all discovered that Pete was married and had 8 children! So much for his shyness!
There was another guy who was a recovering alcoholic and had a story of both change for the worse as well as change for the better. Another former football teammate of mine – who wasn’t particularly “spiritual” in high school – had become an elder in his church as well as the leader of the largest Christian businessman’s gathering in a major U.S. city.
Change; what is change and how does it happen in our lives? More to the point, what is spiritual change and how does God accomplish that change in us?
The Apostle Paul writes:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
He is saying there is to be something different about our lives as followers of Christ. There is to be something different about the way we think; about the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves in the world. And because of the way we think, there is to be something different about the “pattern” of our lives, the way we live.
Our current series of messages, “I Believe But…” focuses on areas of our lives where we sometimes struggle to live out the faith we profess. We know that God wants us to experience his peace, but we still worry. We know that God teaches us to forgive others, yet we struggle to forgive. We know that God promises joy through obedience, but sometimes we settle for superficial happiness over obedience. And when Paul says, “…be transformed…” we think to ourselves, “But I don’t think I can change…”
Have you ever found yourself thinking that way? Do you ever struggle with worry or forgiveness? Ask God to use his word to open your heart and mind to the changes he wants to make in you – not necessarily easy change – but real change!
Pastor Brian Coffey
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