What does it mean to change our ways? Really.
Aristotle said: "The unexamined life is simply not worth living."
So what needs to change? Behavior?
Could that be nothing more than behavior modification?
What was does real deep change of the heart look like?
I know a little better this night than I did last year, a few months ago.
This isn't about the power of positive thinking---"it's all good."
This isn't about being positive, giving thanks in all things.
This is about a wrestle with those things that cause our heart to be darkened to the Light.
Here's a story of someone who chose darkness, for whatever reason.
2 Samuel 4:8 Here, David, here is the head of the son of Saul, your enemy. Avenged!
No. No. No, cries David in “Here is the head of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, your enemy, who sought your life."
Once again, do not take matters into your own hands. "As the LORD lives, Who has redeemed my life out of every adversity, you will not be rewarded for revenge.
How can I see this day, this circumstance that my God is redeeming me right out of this adversity?
Leave it on His Lap.
Make straight the way of the LORD, John 1:23.
A calling to change our circumstances. No
A calling to change our ways.
Written in the stark darkness of my life.
All the lights, all the power in our neighborhood is off.
There is more Light in my life pushing out this present darkness than ever.
There is NO real change until there is a change of our hearts. Anything less does not change us. IF our behavior is only modified then there really is no change. The more Light that I receive from His Word the more my behavior should be and is being changed. I find my heart changing as I do Beth's study on James. It is being a little difficult but I know that He will help me, for whatever He brings to me, He will more than enable me to do. Oh, to let His Light so penetrate me that He receives the glory, not me.
ReplyDeleteHOLY CHANGE
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think I have had a change of heart only to see some more of the old needs to be purged. I think it is incremental--truly transformed hearts, that is. Like Bev says, more this day than last year, like Mary Lou says, "the more Light from His Word I receive, the more behavior should change."
And as the Lord says, "Not by might, nor by power but by My Spirit." Zech 4:6 Change comes from His Hand on our lives through His Holy Spirit. We can't muscle it into happening. He will give Light, and we receive Him and are transformed into His likeness, as His very own daughters. Amazing Grace that He bestows upon our heads.
"But to ALL who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Born, not of an inherited position, not because we muscled it or spoke it so, but because God willed it to be True.