Change, "Finding Yourself," and Narrowing the Gap of Duplicity

            I used to think “change” was a dirty word.  I know I’m not alone.  My school yearbooks have the same message written all over them: “Have a great summer!  Don’t ever change!”  One of the main excuses for divorce goes something like this: “We’ve both just changed too much.  We aren’t the same people we were when we said our vows all those years ago.”  A Dad-ism I grew up with was, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  I still think that philosophy is valid in some cases.  I crave consistency, structure, and even monotony.  It’s known.  Tested.  Safe.

            Then two things happened that began to significantly change (ha!) my perspective on change.  First, I married a dreamer.  Jon and I are about as opposite as a couple can get in nearly every way.  He likes his steak medium-rare, and I like well-done; why should this area be any different?  Where I resist change, Jon seeks it.  He brings the innovation to my consistency, the spontaneity to my structure, and the adventure to my monotony.  This dichotomy makes us drive each other crazy, but it is also the reason why we are crazy about each other.  We are stronger together.  Second, adult life happened.  We have been pelted with an absurd amount of major external and internal changes in the past five and a half years.  Even though all those changes were difficult for me in the moment, I can look back and see why they were necessary and how God has used them for good.  It has taught me that change is simply a part of life, and it’s not something I can avoid.  Neither is it something I should dread.

            In fact, the life of a Jesus follower is summed up in the word “change.”  Romans 12:2 instructs us, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (NLT).  Why is such an obvious truth so hard for us to grab a hold of?  One reason is that the world has it all backwards (shocker there, right?).  Our culture tells us that we need to find ourselves – to figure out who we think we are –  then defend that identity and resist becoming anyone else with all our might.  We must never change.  This way of thinking is all about self, and though it masquerades as empowerment, it is really a crippling victim mindset:

•       I must “find” who I am.
•       I can’t help what I find (I will never admit that I have a choice in the matter).
•      What I do is based on who I am. 
•       If I can’t help who I am, I can’t help what I do.
•       I can justify my behavior, no matter how appalling or wrong, based on who I am. 

      I believe this whole philosophy is a huge contributor to our country’s problems of depression, suicide, and violence.  You see, underneath this messy logic, we are really subconsciously blaming our Maker for our behavior instead of taking responsibility for our own actions.  Not only that, but we are trying to find our identities in ourselves and apart from our Creator, whose very image is woven into the fabric of our being – believer or not.  What an impossible and hopeless task!  Anything that we can possibly discover about ourselves apart from Him is at best incomplete.  At the same time we are being pushed to reject the only One who can tell us who we were always meant to be and who has the power to change us into that person from the inside out.  Matthew 10:39 warns us, “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”  When we cling to the life and identity of our own construction, we will come up lost and empty.  However, when we recognize that our life is really not our own and offer it up to be transformed by the One who brought it into existence, we will end up finding what we were searching for in the first place.

      So, what does this transformation look like?  Does God want to trash us, start over from scratch, and make a bunch of little clones?  No!  God did make us as individuals with our own personalities, life experiences, talents, and purposes.  However, apart from Him we are dead in our sin (Eph. 2:1-3).  A dead person cannot grow or do anything useful.  The only transformation a dead person can experience on his own is deterioration.  The first transformation must happen through belief in Jesus Christ.  When we put our faith in Him, He makes us spiritually alive (Eph. 2:4-9).  Jesus takes our sin into His account, and He puts His righteousness into our account.  Picture Him taking on all of your student loans, car loans, mortgages, credit card debt, and personal loans so that you are no longer responsible for them and in return giving you an entire life savings to put into your bank account.  It’s a weak and incomplete picture, but it gives you a small idea of what He offers to you spiritually.  When we put our trust in Him based on the work that was accomplished through His death and resurrection, our position changes from:

dead to alive

a child of wrath to a child of God

unrighteous to righteous

sinner to saint

debtor to forgiven

enslaved to free

lost to saved

…

            Are you getting the picture?  When we put our faith in Christ, God sees us through the lens of His Son.  We are complete, perfect, and glorified in Him.  That is who we are, and it cannot be changed any further.  It’s a done deal.  What a complete and utter transformation!  However, if that is true, why are churches full of unrighteous people who still live like they are lost and enslaved to sin?

            The answer lies in the fact that the transformation of our outward practice does not change at the same time or rate as the transformation of our position before God.  Our position refers to how God sees us.  He is outside of time, so He sees us as finished, glorified, and perfected because He sees the whole picture.  However, our outward practice is very much bound to time.  Changing our outward practice is a process that will not be complete until Jesus takes us home.  Think about it.  Putting your faith in Jesus does not instantly eradicate your drug habit, your porn addiction, your lack of self-control, your gossip problem, or the immoral relationship you have with that man you have no business being with.  Learning to walk in freedom from these sins takes time, but it is so important.  While our practice is so very different from our position, our witness to other people is shot.  No one wants to listen to a hypocrite.  Not only that, but when we sin, we are not acting in accordance with our truest identity.  We are not being ourselves.  This is why I said earlier that the Christian life is summed up by the word “change.”  Our mission is to be able to share what God has done with others without being completely sabotaged by our own hypocrisy, and to become in our behavior who we really are before God (the big Bible word for this is sanctification).  This brings glory to our Father in heaven.  To that end, God is constantly working on transforming us through our obedience to Him so that the gap of duplicity (as our Pastor so often calls it) between our practice and our position narrows.  That gap won’t completely disappear during our time on earth, but we can take hope in the fact that “God, who began the good work within [us], will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil. 1:6, NLT).  Change that is brought about by Jesus in ourselves or in others isn't something to be resisted or feared, but to be expected and welcomed with hopeful anticipation.    

Speaking of change…

           

            You may have noticed some changes on my site.  A few months ago, I joined a Facebook group for Moms in the Making bloggers.  I have been learning a lot from them, and visiting their blogs has inspired me to continue improving the look, the functionality, and the content of my site.  There is one major change that I have been considering for a while now, and I’m finally going to take the plunge – however I will need your help on deciding the specifics for this particular change.  Come back next Monday to find out more! 


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A Life Unexpected (Part 5)

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

-C.S. Lewis

            Some of my sweetest memories are of sitting alone outside with God.  Several of these instances took place behind the chapel at Bible school.  The town was small and fairly still with the exception of the bustling of the students and the occasional mooing of cows in the distance.  As I enjoyed the various shapes of puffy clouds against the bright blue of the sky and examined the intricacies of all the different uncomfortable rocks on which I sat, I talked to God.  Unhurried and surrounded by comfortable silence, I told him whatever was on my heart and mind, I read some of His Word, and I thought about who He was as I drank in my surroundings.  Then, I would wait.  Sometimes, I could almost hear Him answer my frustrations and my questions in my heart.  Often, I already knew the answers, but I just needed to be reminded and reassured.  He was always so gentle and so patient, but direct. 

It was in one of these times that I told Him that He could do anything with my life.  In particular, I told Him that I would keep loving and serving Him even if that meant that my dreams of marriage never came true or that I would be living in some awful mud hut in a foreign land (just please, Lord, keep the snakes far away!).  I told Him I was willing and that I wanted to be obedient, and I meant it with every fiber of my being.  As crazy as it sounds, indescribable peace filled my heart, and fear had no more place.  As I have experienced different trials and allowed myself to drift away in doubt, discouragement, and fear, I have found that the quickest way back to that sweet place of peace, surrender, and fellowship is the way that I arrived there in the first place: by remembering who I am and whose I am.

Who I Am

           When trying to define myself, I am often tempted to list off describing qualities, such as: wife, babysitter, organizer, musician, etc.  In reality, these titles refer to my roles, jobs, behaviors, and hobbies and fall far short when it comes to determining who I really am.  If I found my identity in them, then I would be completely lost should they be changed or taken away.  Fortunately, my identity is much more stable, and God has told me what it is.  As a believer in Christ, I am:

And SO MUCH MORE!

This identity (or position) is at the core of every believer, and it cannot be lost.  Neither does it originate within the believer, but it is the gift Christ gives us of Himself.  We believers don’t always act in accordance with this identity, but that does not change the fact of who we are in Christ.  Paul understood this truth better than most.  He had an impressive earthly pedigree and resume, which he outlined briefly in Philippians 3:5, 6.  Continuing on in the passage, we see that he considered all of it to be a loss in comparison with knowing Christ and being found in Him.  Christ’s righteousness in him was far superior to any feeble righteousness that he could muster up on his own.  Paul’s earthly successes were garbage compared to the value of the life he could live in Christ.  He admitted that he was not complete and perfect in living out his identity in Christ, but he also knew that on this earth he was to press on in growing more like Christ and becoming in practice who he already was in his position.  This type of thinking is completely illogical to the world, which is why Paul also pointed to one very crucial aspect of the believer’s identity – that of being citizens of heaven.        

The fact that I am a citizen of heaven is one of the most encouraging truths to me in times of difficulty.  This life is not all there is, which gives me hope.  I was not made to fit into this world’s mold and to constantly chase after the ever-elusive goals of temporary self-fulfillment, success, pleasure, and happiness.  I was made for lasting joy, for meaningful worship, for deep fellowship, for liberating rest, and for eternity.  I was made to last and to be in a relationship with the one who always was, is, and will be.      

Whose I Am

            Understanding who we are is only part of the equation.  We must also understand whose we are.  I know I have touched on this in previous posts, but the answer to living a life unexpected really all boils down to this.  We are not our own.  We belong to Christ – to God.  He has not hidden His character from us.  In His Word, He has revealed that He is:

And, again, SO MUCH MORE!

            He loves us so much, and He does not find joy in our pain.  Many cultures in many ages have believed in gods who required blood sacrifices to cover the sins of man.  The one true God also required blood to cover sin, but He Himself came down and met the requirement that His character demanded.  He could have left us as lost causes to die and be separated from Him forever.  We deserve just that.  Instead, the Creator laid down His life to save us, though He knew many of us would turn our backs on Him, hate Him, and trample all over His sacrifice.  He could not give us a greater demonstration of His love.  We will suffer in this life, but only for a little while.  For those who have trusted in Christ, we know that we will have an eternity of the life that He offers, which far surpasses any short, self-pleasing life that we can dream up on this earth.  We get little tastes of that heavenly life when we take the time to worship Him for who He is and rest in the identity He has given to us.  For those who haven’t trusted in Christ, He wants you to come to Him.  He wants to have a relationship with you and to give you an identity and a purpose that are secure.  You weren’t made to go through this life alone.  We can trust Him to lead us through a life unexpected.