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 II Corinthians 5:17
I'm going to make a bold assumption and say that everyone would like to make an important life change. You would like to go into the new year different. There are things about yourself that you are not happy with, and in the new year you would like to have a new you.
Now, cynics will say people don't change. But they do. People may not change for the better as frequently as we would like. But they do improve. We certainly see people go the other way, don't we? We have all seen people deteriorate. If people can go down, why then can they not go up? Why cannot a person become new?
Change does happen. People do change for the better. That's what Christianity is all about. It has always been about that. It is a religion of transformation and changed lives. Christianity is a religion of the new beginning. It is resurrection! Through the long centuries, Christianity as an institution has had its ups and its downs. Every time it has gone down, it has been because it has lost its core. The very core of Christianity is that Jesus Christ saves lives. In a relationship with Christ, there is a transformation; something new happens, and time and again somebody will say, "I became a new person."
A number of years ago, a young woman came to this church about a year after she had started attending Alcoholics Anonymous. She had one year of sobriety and, although she was feeling good that she had achieved that goal, everything else in her life was pretty bad. She was as unhappy and unpleasant a human being as anybody could be. She dragged and whined and complained. But at the same time she was working very hard at being a different person. She didn't like what she had been and didn't like what she was.
One of the steps in the AA programs is taking a moral inventory, and part of doing that is finding somebody to hear your story. You bring up everything you have been ashamed of, everything you have not liked about yourself. Every once in awhile somebody will call me to ask me to hear their moral inventory. That's an honor, because this is sacred ground when somebody has the courage to put it all on the table.
So this woman told me her story, in two very long sessions. She was hoping to experience a conversion, longing to get free from the burdens of her life. But it didn't happen. From time to time afterwards she would ask, "When is it going to get better? When am I going to get some relief?"
One day I responded to her with a statement I have since promised never to say again to any human being, and I haven't. Like many people, in my younger years I was oh, so wise. Today I hope I am smart enough to know what I don't know. I said to her, "Look, nothing sudden is going to occur. There won't be any bright lights, where all of a sudden you'll feel different. What you're going to be like is as it has been with me. You go along and then you come into a new arena and it's on a higher level and you see more light and you see more freedom and things are better, and then you go that way for a while and then you go to the next level. But nothing dramatic is going to happen."
Two weeks after that, following a Sunday service, I saw her walking down a hall. Her face was radiant! She was aglow with an enormous smile. Her eyes smiled, her lips smiled, everything was smiling. This was beyond even the look of a woman who has just fallen in love. "What happened?" I asked. "You're different." She responded, "I found Jesus."
We went off to a side room so she could tell me what had happened. That previous Friday night she had been to a Smoke-Enders meeting. "In the midst of the meeting," she said, "a great big ex-Marine talked about how he had been able to stop smoking through the power of the Christ. As he was speaking, something happened in me. A light came on. The burden was lifted. "Arthur," she said, "I have Christ in my heart. I've been converted. I'm changed." And she was.
I got a Christmas card from her the other day. She's very happily married and doing well. She's been through a lot in these past years, but the conversion took. The whining left. The complaining left. She became a new woman.
Some weeks after her conversion, she asked me to baptize her. Present at the baptism was the ex-Marine. He was five foot six inches tall, and weighed about 130 pounds. He was smaller than I am. Afterwards I said, "You told me he was a great big six-footer." She answered, "When he was telling his story, he seemed to be ten feet tall." That's the effect it can have when the Christ spirit takes over.
St. Paul, in Second Corinthians 5:17, says,
All who are in Christ, old things are passed away; see, everything is new.
How can you be a new you, how can I be a new me in the new year? I have three thoughts. As you read them and think about a new you, remember that God is in your process. And remember what Oswald Chambers said, that God's end, God's reason for being, is to be in our process.
The first step is desire. You've got to have desire. If you don't want to be a different kind of person with passionate desire, it will never happen. When we say, "I hope, I wish,? there is no energy or substance. Hoping and wishing are passive. If you want something to happen, you've got to have desire. Go at it with passion!
Looking at the story of my own journey, I see that my major breakthroughs have all been a product of two things: I have suffered, and I have been passionately, sometimes desperately, interested in getting beyond where I was. Sometimes I was in pain for months or even years in a certain area of my life. I have had to pray and work; at times I would see a therapist. Finally there would be a breakthrough. What kept me going through it all was passionate desire.
The second step is to believe you can change. Have faith that something will happen. This is knowing that those who are faithful will be rewarded by God's faithfulness to them. So be faithful and believe that something indeed will happen.
Along with faith goes something equally important. That is, take action! Put some feet on your faith. Do something!
A couple of years ago, I had an experience that has stayed in my mind. My wife and I were in somebody's home at a social event. One of the guests was a woman well into her eighties whom we both noticed right away because her face glowed. It was soft, gentle, winsome, warm, appealing and attractive. I knew I had to get to that woman and find out about her.
You know, there's an old saying that until the age of 40, we have the face that God gave us, and from 40 and beyond we have the face that we make out of what we do with our lives.
So I told the woman how I admired her beautiful face and asked her if she could explain the glow we saw. "Sixty years ago," she said, "when I was a freshman at Smith College, one of my philosophy professors gave us some of his own personal philosophy of life, and it has stayed with me and been a guideline for my life. In his philosophy we are the architects of our lives, and if we use good materials, we will have a good life. If we use poor materials and shoddy workmanship, then our lives will reflect that as well." She said, "I have never forgotten that. I am building my house with bricks. When there is a brick that's wrong, it doesn't serve me well. I throw it away."
Her story reminds me of the fable of the carpenter who had hit very bad times. A wealthy man living nearby noticed his condition and, wanting to do something to help, asked him to build a house for him. After the plans were drawn up, the wealthy man said that he would be away for an extended time but to go ahead with the building. "Make sure you hire the best workers and use the finest materials available."
The carpenter, however, seeing an opportunity to make extra money, hired less-skilled workmen at lower wages and ordered cheaper materials. The house was built the house in a slipshod way, cutting corners and hiding the blemishes with paint. When the wealthy man returned home, the carpenter presented him with the keys to the house. "I have done as you have instructed. Here are the keys to your new house." Then the rich man said to the carpenter, returning the keys, "No, I had you build this house for yourself. Enjoy it."
This story is a good metaphor for life. We are the architects, the real builders of our lives. We choose the materials and we are responsible for the workmanship.
As you will remember, Mother Teresa was in and out of the hospital several times before her death. I remember one October night the doctors said she wasn't expected to live more than a few hours. When I woke up in the morning, I expected the newscaster to say she had died. Instead she was being released from the hospital. And do you remember that incident where she said, "I said a prayer last night and prayer is like taking a vitamin pill. I'm ready to go again." And after her open-heart surgery, as she was leaving the hospital, she stood before the doctor and said, "I've got enough energy to box you."
What was Mother Teresa all about?
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things are passed away; see, everything is new.
Why did she keep going? Why was she so strong? Well, she had a strong constitution, yes. There is the gift of modern medicine, which is miraculous. But those aren't enough. This woman had extraordinary faith -- belief in the will of God and belief that for the rest of her life, however long she lived, she would be at work fulfilling her purpose. That gave her strength and a continual renewal. In one of her books she says:
We must be aware of oneness with Christ, as He was aware of oneness with His Father. Our activity is apostolic only insofar as we permit Him to work in us and through us with His power, with His desire, with His love. We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live His life fully in us.
"If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation." Let me put it in other words. You may know the name Thomas Kelly. He was a Quaker leader, professor, writer, teacher, earlier in this century. There is a wonderful story of his first day at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He was at the home of Rufus Jones, a well-known Quaker professor and writer of that era, who said that Kelly was so excited about his new life as a college student that he said, "I just want to make my life a miracle!" And he did.
How about you? What about saying, "I just want to make my life a miracle!" Follow the steps of desire and of believing, and it will happen.
Then there's a third step, as important as the other two. Persist, and be patient. God has a very different sense of time from us. We always want it right now. "Okay, God, I have done my work. I have suffered my pain. I have gone through the process. I have believed. I have been faithful. It's time." But, practice persistent patience, because God never makes a mistake. God's timing may not be your timing, but it is always perfect.
We need to remember that some things can take a long time. It takes nine months for a baby to be formed in the womb of the mother. For us to be fully grown spiritually, mentally, emotionally, it may take nine years or ninety years or more.
There is a wonderful analogy of how long it can take to be great. It's from Martha Graham, who is the grande dame of dancers in America, if not in the world:
It takes about ten years to produce a dancer. That's not intermittent training; that's daily training. You go step by step by step. In ten years, if you are going to be a dancer at all, you will have mastered the instrument. You will know the wonders of the human body, and there is nothing more wonderful. Next time you look in the mirror, notice the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of the little bones in your wrists; think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
Perfection is a miracle. But it can happen.
The three steps to become new are desire, faith and work, and patience. Let the miracle happen to you in the year ahead. Let there be a new you in the new year. I believe it can happen. Let us pray.
Lord God, we give You thanks for the challenges and for all that You put before us which helps us to grow. May the Christ spirit take us over. May we have a transformation. May we have the desire, the faith, and do the work. Lord, give us the patience that one day we might all know the great victory of a new self. We ask this in Jesus' name. AMEM |
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