Godly Change Series

Many years ago the U. S. Army wanted to get off more rounds of cannon

fire, and so they hired a consultant to study the problem. He went into the

field and noticed that the soldiers stepped back from the cannon and waited

for about 3 seconds every time they fired it. When asked why they replied

that they were following directions laid down in the army manual. The

consultant read through all the back issues until he traced the instructions to

their origin in the Civil War. Soldiers were then advised to step back before

firing to hold the gun horses head so that they would not bolt and thus jerk

the cannon off target. These were important instructions at the time, but

everything had changed, and horses were no longer there. These instructions

had passed down for years and were followed even though they had no

relevance whatever. The manual was changed to fit the changed

circumstances.

Change is wise when the old way of doing something can be done better to

fulfill the purpose for which you do it at all. The Christian life is to be a life of

constant change where we are getting better and better at pleasing God by

loving Him with all our hearts, and by loving our neighbor as ourselves. The

goal of all we do as a church is change. Change is the name of the game, and

if we do not see change we are failing. Christ-likeness is only achieved by

change. Christian education does not happen just because information is

imparted. There are millions of non-Christians who can tell you the story of

Adam and Eve, Noah, and Jonah. They can even tell the story of the cross

and resurrection. They have the facts, but they are not changed by them.

You do not have a Christian education until the facts of the Bible change your

life, and lead you to a commitment to Christ as Lord of your life.

Nobody becomes a Christian without change, and nobody becomes a

growing Christian without more change. Change is the essence of the

Christian life, and when a Christian stops changing, they stop growing. The

Christian is only learning if he or she is changing. A school teacher told one

of her students he had to stay after school and write on the blackboard one

hundred times, so he would learn the proper way of saying it, "I have gone."

He laboriously worked his way through the 100 lines, and then he left this

note for the teacher: "I finished and I have went home." All his efforts were

not a learning experience for he did not change.

Learning means that you change in your thinking, feeling, or acting. If

change does not happen, learning has not happened. You cannot measure

Christian education by how many years you have gone to Sunday School, or

how many books you have read. The only measure that matters is how much

have you changed to become a Christ-centered person.

D. L. Moody wrote the entire theology of the Christian life on the fly leaf

of his Bible. He put it in 7 stages of change.

1. Justification-a change of standing before God.

2. Regeneration- a change of nature from God.

3. Repentance-a change of mind about God.

4. Conversion-a change of life for God.

5. Adoption-a change of family in God.

6. Sanctification-a change of service unto God.

7. Glorification-a change of place with God.

If the goal is to be like Jesus, and we are not yet there, then it follows that

change is what the Christian life is all about. It begins with change and does

not cease until we become like Him in the resurrection. An evangelist visiting

a girls mission school in the South Sea Islands was greeted by two rows of

girls singing, "What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since

Jesus came into my life." He was deeply touched when one of the staff

members leaned over and whispered, "Everyone of those girls is either the

daughter or granddaughter of a cannibal." Change is the sign of authentic

Christianity.

Someone once very cleverly put up a sign in the church nursery using one

of Paul's sentences to the Corinthians. It was from I Cor. 15:51 which says,

"We will not all sleep but we will all be changed." Being changed is basic to

the nursery care of babies, and it is basic to the plan of God for His people.

The last thing that happens to us in time is change. The mortal puts on

immortality. Both the living and the dead has this in common: They end time

and begin eternity with change.

We could go and on with evidence to support the importance of change in