Can you have a deep down core change on your own?
“The Great Commission is not just a commission to be for self. It is a command to be obeyed. God has called us to go; there is no other option,” she said. “What would your life look like if you had nothing to lose? What would your life look like if you had nothing to prove? That’s the call of God on your life.”
-Heather Mercer
As I listened to Heather Mercer and revisit a couple of the questions she asked during her talk…“What would your life look like if you had nothing to lose? What would your life look like if you had nothing to prove?”…Wow, those are tough questions to think about and be honest with yourself. Why? Because in reality I do have something to lose and things to prove! At least the human side of me does. I think for many of us, myself included, we continue to look at a relationship with God completely in the wrong perspective.
If I was honest with myself and 100% completely sold out to God, then I truly wouldn’t have anything to lose or prove. However, in my daily thinking I have not surrendered to this fact. My thinking is I do have something to lose and prove. I have places “I” want to go. Yep, it is still all about me. I wish it wasn’t, but I just cannot seem to shake that way of acting deep down at my core. Let me clarify, I do not walk around conscientiously thinking this way, but if I stop and get honest with what is deep inside, then this is true.
Paul in Romans 7:7-25 says…
What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
11For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Let’s be honest here…can I shake this way of thinking that it is all about me? Can any one of have a deep down core change on their own? The answer is no, the only real lasting change has to come from God, as Paul is stating above. We can change behavior or modify behavior, but a true, complete transformation can only come from God. I keep asking God to change me deep down at the core, you know from the inside out. What can I say we are all a work in progress.
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Page Views Since January 2008
-
