The Possibility of Fundamental Change

You Are Not Enslaved To Your Past by John Piper

Christianity means change is possible. Deep, fundamental change. It is possible to become tender-hearted when once you were callous and insensitive. It is possible to stop being dominated by bitterness and anger. It is possible to become a loving person no matter what your background has been.

The Bible assumes that God is the decisive factor in making us what we should be. With wonderful bluntness the Bible says, “Put away malice and be tenderhearted.” It does not say, “If you can . . . ” Or: “If your parents were tender-hearted to you . . . ” Or: “If you weren’t terribly wronged or abused . . . ” It says, “Be tender-hearted.”

This is wonderfully freeing. It frees us from the terrible fatalism that says change is impossible. It frees us from mechanistic views that make our backgrounds our destinies.

If I were in prison and Jesus walked into my cell and said, “Leave this place tonight,” I might be stunned, but if I trusted his goodness and power, I would feel a rush of hope that freedom is possible. If he commands it, he can accomplish it.

If it is night and the storm is raging and the waves are breaking high over the pier, and the Lord comes to me and says, “Set sail tomorrow morning,” there is a burst of hope in the dark. He is God. He knows what he is doing. His commands are not throw-away words.

His commands always come with freeing, life-changing truth to believe. For example: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other [that’s the command], just as God in Christ also has forgiven you [that’s the life-changing truth]. Therefore be imitators of God [command], as beloved children [life-changing truth]; and walk in love [command], just as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma [life-changing truth]” (Ephesians 4:32–5:2).

There is life-changing power in the truths of this text. Ponder them with me as you pray for that power to change you.

1. God adopted us as his children.

We have a new Father and a new family. This breaks the fatalistic forces of our “family of origin.” “Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, he who is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9).

I once heard a young man quote Hebrews 12:10–11 with tears of deep conviction and great joy because they assured him that he was not doomed to think of God in terms of his abusive earthly father: “They [our earthly fathers] disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we share his holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

They did this . . . but he does that. This is a life-changing truth. We can know it, believe it, and be changed by it, no matter what kind of earthly fathers we have. God reveals himself in his word to revolutionize our thinking about his fatherhood. We are not cursed to think in the old categories if our upbringing was defective.

2. God loves us as his children.

We are “loved children.” The command to imitate the love of God does not hang in the air; it comes with power: “Be imitators of God as loved children.” “Love!” is the command and “being loved” is the power.

3. God has forgiven us in Christ.

Be tender-hearted and forgiving just as God in Christ forgave you. What God did for us becomes the power to change. He forgave us. That opens a relationship of love and a future of hope. And does not tender-heartedness flow from a heart overwhelmed with being loved undeservedly and being secured eternally? The command to be tender-hearted has more to do with what God has done for you than what your mother or father did to you. You are not enslaved to your past.

4. Christ loved you and gave himself up for you.

“Walk in love just as Christ loved you.” The command to walk in love comes with life-changing truth that we are loved. At the moment when there is a chance to love, and some voice says, “You are not a loving person,” you can say, “Christ’s love for me makes me a new kind of person. His command to love is just as surely possible for me as his promise of love is true for me.”

My plea is that you resist fatalism with all your might. No, with all God’s might. Change is possible. Pursue it until you are perfected at the coming of Christ.

Contamination

HT: @ChristineCaine

Moving On

From Toby Mac Facebook Page

Future Vision

HT: Ziglar.com

Moving On

Past Perfect

From @DailyKeller

Moving Past Your Past

From Pete Wilson - " I love this short film RELEVANT has adapted from an article I wrote entitled “Moving Past Your Past,” published in the March 2014 issue of RELEVANT Magazine. The article was based on my latest book Let Hope In"


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(Please excuse the included commercial - the video is worth waiting for)

Out With the Old, In With the New

"One of our fundamental spiritual problems is this: we want God to do something new while we keep doing the same old thing. We want God to change our circumstances without us having to change at all. But if we are asking God for new wine, we will need a new wineskin.

Change is a two-sided coin

Out with the old is one side.

In with the new is the other side.

Most of us get stuck spiritually because we keep doing the same thing while expecting different results...."

-Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From A Totally Different Life, page 55 (italics in the original)

Burn the Ships

"There are moments in life when we need to burn the ships to or past.We do so by making a defining decision that will eliminate the possibility of sailing back to the old world we left behind. You burn the ships named Past Failure and Past Success. You burn the ship named Bad Habit. You burn the ship named Regret. You burn the ship named Guilt. You burn the ship named My Old Way of Life."

 -Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From A Totally Different Life, page 52 (italics in the original)

Moving On in 2014

From Tony Evans Facebook Page

Practicing Detachment

From The Anchoress:

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go.. to move forward. — CS Lewis

That is very true. It is also true of great experiences — those moments of ‘triumph’ when for a short time it all comes together for you; the accolades that follow can surprise and confound and are always too effusive.

Take what is healing in all of that, but the rest must be let go. Practice detachment, or you begin to believe the hype, and then you’re lost. If you have not practiced detachment, when your hand inevitably misses a rung, it will come a hard, hard fall.

Don't Waste Life's Poop

Okay, that title got your attention, didn't it!  Great insight from Ben Reed at  Life and Theology from a youthful experience working on a pig farm.

One thing that stuck with me from that class was the way that nothing was wasted on the farm. Not even the pigs’ poop.

The poop was piled in a barn, and over the course of a year, the poop would compost, leaving a rich fertilizer that the farmers would use to fertilize the fields that other animals would graze. It was an incredible additive and boost to those fields, giving yields that greatly surpassed the non-fertilized fields. In other words, the poop made the crops grow faster.

Pig poop, though foul-smelling to us humans, contains nutrients that help crops grow really well. After it was harvested and composted (by which time it didn’t stink anymore), it was simply spread across the field in the spring, just before a rain, its nutrients used by the budding crops.

The poop from your past

You’ve got poop in your life. Things you’ve done that you’re not proud of. Things that have been done to you that you wish hadn’t happened. Dreams that you lost, relationships that crumbled. Jobs lost. Marriages destroyed. Addictions that you’re ashamed of. You’ve messed up in a way that you’d hope and pray nobody would ever mess up. You’ve done things…or not done thing…that you never want to repeat.

We typically do one of two things with that pain and suffering:

1. Ignore it and act like it never happened.
2. Wallow in it.

Neither is healthy.

Option 1 leaves us judgmental of others who have real pain, ignorant of our own Pharisaical stench. We’re left with a shallow understanding of our sin and pain…and thus a shallow understanding of God’s goodness and grace. Acting like “poop” never happened wastes our pain.

Option 2 leaves us in a crying, heaping, depressed, self-depracating mess. All of the time. We get stuck in what “could’ve been,” what “should’ve been,” and “who I wish I was,” constantly making ourselves pay for our past mistakes over and over again. OR making others pay for our past mistakes by disengaging from those who love us, and who would love to help. Wallowing in our “poop” wastes our pain.

I’ve got a 3rd option, and I take my cue from the pig poop.

Allow your failures to help someone else.

The way God brought you through the junk can help someone else who, right now, can’t see the light. They’re stuck. They’re in the middle of an addiction or the throes of suffering.
Live a life full of grace because you’ve been graced so much by the King. Live a life of love because you were loved first. Live a life of forgiveness because of the heaping amounts of forgiveness you’ve been given that you can never repay. Live a life of generosity because you’ve been given so much.

Your valleys can become great pastures that others can graze from as they see you living life to the full. (John 10:10)

No need to ignore the past. It’s purpose isn’t to hold you back. No need to wallow in it, either.
Let someone else graze from it.

If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.  And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. – 2 Corinthians 1:6-7

In other words, don't waste your life's pig poop!
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A Future in Which We Can Be Changed

Gracious God,
our sins are too heavy to carry,
too real to hide,
and too deep to undo.

Forgive what our lips tremble to name,
what our hearts can no longer bear,
and what has become for us
a consuming fire of judgment.

Set us free from a past that we cannot change;
open to us a future in which we can be changed;
and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image,
through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

- from the Book of Common Worship

HT: Trevin Wax

Burn My Bridges...And Dance Within the Flames

Lyrics to "Hold Me Close" by Kim Hill

(Love this song. Need these words. Expresses my heart)

I'm ready to stop running, let myself be caught
Stop pretending, let myself be known
I'm ready to stop hiding, let myself be found
Held safe and sound, in Your loving arms

So hold me close in Your arms of mercy
Look inside, show me what You see
Touch my life, and I will stop my searching
And find that place in You, that waits for me

Whatever I held onto, I'm ready to let go
Burn my bridges, and dance within the flames
All of my wrong choices have lead my heart back home
To the love that swallows up my pain

I can see You've been there all along
You've reached into my recklessness
And filled me with Your song

© 1998 Word Music / Integrity's Hosanna! Music / ASCAP / All rights reserved

Hope is Grounded in Forgiveness

"Our happiness lies in hope.  If we can approach the future with hope, we can be happy.  This is because hope is the prevailing attitude that the pain and disappointments of the past do not have to be endlessly repeated. Hope dares to imagine the future as a legitimate alternative to the vicious repetitions of the past.  But the refusal to forgive is a toxic memory that endlessly pulls the painful past into the present.  The toxic memory of the unforgiven past poisons the present and contaminates the future."

Unconditional: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness, by Brian Zahnd, Page 71