GRACE-WARD!
It has been said that the only person who enjoy’s change is a baby with a dirty diaper!
That might be a bit of an overstatement but I think we’d admit that most of us tend to stick with what we know. We find a style we like, a color we believe we look good in, a store that we like to shop at and we stick to it. Whenever I go out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory 8 out of 10 times I already know what I’m going to order before I walk in the door…. the Spicy Cashew Chicken! It doesn’t matter if the hostess gives me a menu with 20 pages and 130 menu items. She might as well give me a 3×5 card that says “Spicy Cashew Chicken” as a menu. It’s a proven winner for me. However, if I am unwilling to change what I order, I am limiting my culinary experience to just a one item menu. (By the way I ordered the BBQ Ranch Salad the last time I was there!)
When we are unwilling to allow the instruction of God’s Word and the power of the Holy Spirit to make changes in us we are tragically limiting our experience of the infinite God in our lives. Some people are satisfied with an experience of God that ends at salvation. They’ve limited their experience to a single item. Going from lost to found, from hell to heaven, from darkness to light is a surely a glorious thing, but it’s only one item on God’s menu of grace! God wants us to experience the full smorgasbord of His love, power and favor in our lives. He wants to continue making changes in every area of our lives following our salvation.
That is what happens in the process of discipleship. We welcome Christ’s Lordship in every part of our lives and invite him to change our motives, to change desires, to change our thinking and to change our patterns of behavior. We invite him to make us into disciple-making disciples. He told Peter and Andrew
“I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19)
Only Jesus can do the inner work in the human heart that makes them His true disciple. Yet, He calls us to be a part of that process in the lives of other people.
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
Let Jesus make the change He wants to make in your life this week.