Longing for God

Reading

Psalm 130

Introduction

This is a true story. A musician—I can’t remember who—has about 20 guitars in his music room. Someone asked him how many guitars would be enough. He answered, “One more…”

If there was one thing you could have more of, what would it be?

• More money?
• More health?
• More friends?
• More holidays?
  

All of these would be nice but do any of them really satisfy the deep needs of the human heart?

How about more of what church used to be like? Personally, I’d like more than church ever was. I want

• more of God in our church,
• more of God in my life.
  

I’d like people to have

• more assurance that their sins are forgiven,
• more awareness that God actually loves them,
• more confidence in sharing their faith.
  

The psalm we’re looking at came to my attention as one of the lectionary readings for one of my preaching dates this year but didn’t seem to be the thing to preach on at the time. But something in it caught my eye and resonated with me. Verses 5 and 6 say,

⁵I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,

and in his word I put my hope.

⁶I wait for the Lord

more than watchmen wait for the morning,

more than watchmen wait for the morning.

(NIV)

Something of the psalmist’s intense longing for God comes across. I wonder, do you and I ever experience this depth of yearning for the presence of God?

Now, it’s true that God is everywhere, and there is nowhere that we can flee from his presence, but there are times when the presence of God is a whole lot more than a notional concept; when we are a lot more aware of his presence; when God moves in powerful ways.

Have you ever been in church when the peace of God has descended on everyone present and you’ve not wanted to leave?

In the great revivals of the past, the tangible presence of God caused people to weep for their sins and cry out to God for mercy. Miraculous events happened, with healing, deliverance, and lives being changed.

If we’re to see the demise of our churches arrested and reversed, we certainly need something more than what we’ve had.

Jesus said, ‘… apart from me you can do nothing.’ One implication of this is that if we’re to be the church God wants us to be, Jesus must be the centre and focus of it, otherwise everything we do will amount to nothing. Another implication is that, even though God is everywhere, it is possible to be apart from him.

To move forward as a church, to be all that God intended us to be, we need God’s guidance, God’s presence.

Psalm 130

This psalm is charged with desperation and yet, ironically, is full of hope, and we can learn a few things about seeking God from it.

Verses 1 and 2. The psalmist is more than down in the dumps: ‘Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD’. Yet, even down that deep hole, he knows the LORD is the one with the answers.

Are you in a hole? Cry out to the LORD!

We need mercy from God to turn things around. Apart from him we can do nothing.

Cry out to the LORD!

Verses 3 and 4. The psalmist is only too aware of his own shortcomings and the failings of God’s people, and he knows that sin damages their relationship with God. Psalm 66:18 says, ‘If I had cherished sin in my heart, the LORD would not have listened’ (NIV) and Isaiah 59:1-2 tell us, ‘¹Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. ²But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.’ (NIV)

If we seek the face of God, we will need to take stock. There will be a necessity for repentance, both personal and corporate. And the psalmist has great words of encouragement here. ‘...with [God] there is forgiveness...”

And when God forgives, the record is cleared; he doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve! When we find that forgiveness, how thankful we are! It leads us to a deep reverence for God, and allows us to return to fruitful service.

‘⁴But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.’

Verse 5. How is the psalmist sure he can obtain forgiveness? Because God’s word says so. For example, Isaiah 55:6-7 tells us, ‘⁶Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. ⁷Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.’ (NIV)

That’s Old Testament grace! We also have New Testament grace: 1 John 1:9 says, ‘⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’ (NIV)

Verses 5 and 6. Here we see someone who is determined to secure from God the relief that he needs. I think of Jacob who wrestled all night with God and said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ (Gen. 32:26b, NIV) The psalmist is of the same mind! ‘I wait for the LORD…’ Twice he tells us that.

The first time he tells us that everything he is is focussed on seeking God, ‘my whole being waits…’ This matters more to him than anything else.

Then he tells us that he is more intent on looking for God’s response than watchmen looking for the morning.

I looked up ‘Watchman’ in my New Bible Dictionary. It told me the watchman’s job was to look out for hostile action against the city, and to tell the king of anyone approaching the city walls. Then it says, ‘In time of hostility the dangers of the night were especially feared and the watchmen eagerly looked forward to the break of day.’

We’ve probably all seen war films where commandos or the SAS are attacking an enemy location under cover of darkness. It’s always the guards on night watch who are first to meet their maker! No wonder they long for the night to be over!

The psalmist yearns for the LORD’s response more than they yearn for morning. Only the LORD’s response will meet his need. He waits for God’s merciful response which is as certain to come as the morning, which always comes. But, O that it might come quicker!

If we seek God, we will find him!

Verses 7 and 8. The psalmist encourages the LORD’s people to get on board with him. ‘...put your hope in the LORD,’ he tells them.

Now to hope, in Biblical terms, isn’t wishful thinking. It means to look forward with eager expectation. And God will surely answer with mercy and forgiveness. The morning will come!

We are the people of God, and so we are exhorted to put our hope in the LORD. God is the only one who can meet our need. And we’re given two reasons here for why we can count on him.

Firstly, he loves us more than we can imagine, with a never-failing love. Though we have been unfaithful, he never will be. He loves us with an eternal love.

Secondly, he has done everything necessary to save us. He has paid the full redemption price. In the light of the New Testament, these verses are amazing. They look forward to Jesus who, at the cross, paid the price to rescue us from darkness and from the penalty of our sins.

How to Wait

So, how can we wait on God? It’s not the passive waiting of the dentist’s waiting room. The psalmist is waiting very actively.

• He’s acknowledging his utter dependence on God.
• He’s crying out for mercy.
• He’s reminding God of his forgiving nature.
• He’s making God the focus of his life.
• He’s trusting in the utter reliability of God.
• He’s putting himself in a place where God can find him!
• And he’s hanging in there for the answer!
  

What do we really want for our church, for ourselves? Same old same old? Or more of God?

How do we find the presence of God? How do we find God’s way forward?  Well, here are some ideas.

• First of all we have to recognise we need his guiding presence with us. No amount of planning or reorganisation will make any difference if he isn’t leading us.
• We need to cry out to God for his help.
• If there’s any repenting to be done, we should do it.
• Let’s make the Lord Jesus the focus of our living.
• Let’s understand that God is for us!
• Let’s surround ourselves with the things of God. Actually read our Bibles. Worship and pray.
• Let’s seek until we find.
  

Conclusion

If we are to grow again, we must have God at the centre of all we do. We must soak our on-going journey in prayer.

We must put our hope in the LORD. If we do that, the morning will surely come!

Where do we go from here?

Readings

Proverbs 3:5-6; Mark 14:32-36

Introduction

Throughout the land, there are people waiting for pandemic restrictions to be lifted so they can get on with their lives; us included, no doubt! There’s talk about “building back better, greener.” The thirst for change has never seemed so prominent as it does now. Nor, perhaps, has the challenge of change ever seemed so scary.

There are probably some here who can’t wait for church to get back to what it was. But, along with others, I want to ask, is that really enough? Is there not something more than that? Are we really fulfilling Christ’s commission to his church?

There may be others among us who have a vision of the church of the future—a God-given vision, even—but who have no idea how to bring it into being.

Where do we go from here?

Today, in pondering that question, I want to talk about what may be the very first step in discovering the way ahead.

But this is not relevant only for people in leadership roles who may be saying, ‘There must be more to church than this.’ This is something for anyone and everyone who may be saying, ‘There must be more to life than this.’

Let’s unpack the two verses we heard from Proverbs 3.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

Trust

What do we understand by, ‘trust’? When we say we trust someone—truly trust them—we’re saying they are someone we can rely on, someone who won’t let us down, someone whose word is their bond. We can count on them absolutely.

Trust in the LORD

We’re told here that the person we’re to put our trust in is the LORD. In the Hebrew, that’s YHWH, the eternal God who was, and is, and is to come; the one who created everything that was created, who designed and built the universe.

This is someone who really knows a thing or two!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

To the Hebrew, the heart is not the seat only of the emotions. The word for ‘heart’ includes our mind and our thoughts as well as our emotions. The heart is the centre of all your inner life and being.

We’re told to trust God with everything we are, from the outside, right into the very core of our being. Don’t hedge you bets! Stake your all on God!

God knows what he’s doing. We can count on him absolutely.

Well, we kind-of trust God but we trust him warily. We hold back from giving our all. Why do we do that? Is it because we lean on our own understanding of how things should be? The Bible tells us not to do that. 

Lean not on your own understanding

Now, God gave us minds and the ability to reason but, when it comes to God and what he might want us to do, our understanding is much less than perfect.

Our understanding can be flawed. For example, someone who grew up with a strict, overbearing or abusive father may have great difficulty in relating to ‘Our Father, who is in heaven.’

Our understanding can be incomplete. How long has God been around? How long, by comparison, have we been around? He knows a lot more than we do. And God often leads us only one step at a time. He rarely gives us the full picture all at once of everything that’s to happen.

There can be times when things don’t seem to be going the way we thought they should. The story of Job illustrates the point. Poor Job had no idea why his life was in such a sorry mess. The opening chapter tells us that there were things going on in the heavenly realms that he didn’t know about: his understanding was incomplete. But he maintained his trust in God: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” Job 13:15

Our understanding can be influenced or, worse, manipulated. We can’t be guided by cultural norms. Our society may hold one view, in another society a different view may be upheld. Which one do we trust? And who’s pulling the strings?

It’s absolutely true that God is in ultimate control, but here’s an interesting verse of scripture: 1 John 5:19 says, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” (NIV) A direct translation might be, “secular systems rest passively in the evil one”.

Given that, do we really want to rely on secular cultural trends for guidance?

Depending on our faulty human understanding can be very foolish. Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death." (NIV)

In looking for the way forward, we need to trust in the LORD with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.

To put that another way, trust God wholeheartedly; don’t try to work it all out for yourselves.

Moving on to verse 6, we read

In all your ways submit to him

The old Authorised Version express this as, in all thy ways, acknowledge him, which probably had a much stronger meaning in the 17th century. We could carelessly take that to mean giving a nod in God’s direction by going to church on Sunday. But it’s much more than that.

The latest edition of the NIV reinforces the meaning with the idea of submission to God. What does that mean? The NLT gives us the translation, “Seek his will in all you do” and I think these two translations together give us a clearer understanding.

In our acknowledgement of God, are our prayers along the lines of, “We’ve decided to do this, please bless it”? Would we do better to seek his will by praying instead, “Lord, please show us what you would have us do”?

A good way of discovering God’s will for your life is to read your Bible. You’ll get to know what God is like, his character, his nature. You’ll find out what pleases him, what grieves him, what makes him angry, what fills him with joy. You don’t need me to tell you which of those things to do!

But seeking and finding God’s will is only part of the recipe. There’s no point mixing the ingredients of a cake and then not putting it in the oven! And that’s where the submission comes in. Having discovered God’s will, we need to be obedient to it, even when it may, on occasion, be something we really don’t want to do.

The idea is shown clearly in our New Testament reading. Jesus is agonising in prayer, in the full knowledge of what lies before him. He knows what the Father’s will is, and he knows why it has to be that way, but, as a man, he draws back from the physical torment and the spiritual separation he must face. Yet he surrenders to the Father’s will.

So, in all your ways submit to him. Seek his will in all you do. And really, this is the essence of what it is to live as a Christian.

He will make your paths straight

Now we come to a very clear promise: God will make your paths straight! This doesn’t mean he’ll remove all difficulties. Other translations say, ‘he will direct your paths’, and ‘he will show you which path to take.’ He knows the way through or around the difficulties.

Now notice something else: this is a conditional promise. The promise is conditional on trust and obedience.

Wow! How does all that sit with our shaky trust and our choosy obedience?

I think of Abraham, who leant on his own understanding several times, with less than desirable outcomes. God still led him, and he seems to have learnt along the way.

I think of the man who once said to Jesus, ‘Lord, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief!’ I’m sure his faith was much stronger after Jesus there and then delivered his son from an unclean spirit.

And I’m sure that as we take our tentative steps of trust and obedience, our confidence in God will grow and lead us on to greater things. God is gracious! And we’re on a journey of discovery. Our paths can be twisty but God can straighten out the kinks.

There’s another promise for guidance in Psalm 32:8-9:

“⁸I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

⁹Do not be like the horse or the mule,

which have no understanding

but must be controlled by bit and bridle

or they will not come to you.”(NIV)

God promises to guide, but he wants our trust, he wants our willingness to be led. And he loves us to bits!

He doesn’t give us a road map and leave us to get on with it. He leads us one step at a time, and he walks with us all the way.

Conclusion

As children of God, we have every right to hold him to his promises. And as our loving father, he has every right to expect our trust and obedience.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, the first step in the journey is to seek out God and ask him to show us the way. Now is the time to seek after God for his guidance. Now is the time to ask and go on asking, to seek and go on seeking, to knock and go on knocking

The step after that is to share together what we believe God has shown us, and then to obey what we recognise to be his leading.

He’s promised to guide. Let’s seek him for his will, and then trust him and obey.

⁵Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; ⁶in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (NIV)

Good News!

Reading 

John 3:14-21

Introduction

The gospel passage we’ve just heard is probably very familiar to most of us, and contains quite possibly the most well-known verse in the Bible!  Whilst I will of course refer to that verse, we’ll also be thinking about its immediate context, which gives us important understanding that we might otherwise overlook.

We’ve come in on the end of a conversation between the Lord Jesus and a man called Nicodemus who, presumably troubled in a good way by what he’d seen and heard, sought Jesus out in secret to try and find out more.

Nicodemus was a devout, morally upright Pharisee and a respected member of the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem.  He’s just learnt from Jesus that all these apparent advantages weren’t enough to get him into the kingdom of heaven; he couldn’t be saved by his own efforts, he needed to be born from above, born of the Spirit – born again!  

He asks Jesus, ‘How can this be?’ (9) and, as part of his response, Jesus explains how his mission as Messiah will make salvation possible.

As I thought about the passage, I noticed how well Methodism’s ‘Four Alls’ served as a basis for understanding it:

• All need to be saved
• All can be saved
• All can know they are saved
• All can be saved to the uttermost
  

So let’s think about this passage in those terms.

All Need To Be Saved

All need to be saved.  Why do we need to be saved?  In verses 18 to 20, John tells us what our fundamental problem is; “… people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

In our natural state, we are sinners.  We do wrong, we live for ourselves, we disregard God and do what we want.  As Isaiah puts it, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.  Each of us has turned to our own way.” (Is. 53:6a)

In our natural state we are found wanting.  Paul writes in Romans 3:23 that, “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”

Our sin damages us, and separates us from the relationship with God that we were designed for.  And we dare not get too close to God anyway, lest we are exposed for who we really are!  So we hide in the darkness.  

Yes, we try to do good things, even by attending church.  Does it help?  Do we find ourselves wondering if we’ve done enough, hoping that we have?  Not even Nicodemus’s devout practice of religion was enough to save him.  And neither is ours.

Paul writes in Romans 6:23 that, “… the wages of sin is death…”  And, as John reminds us here, we stand condemned, unable to save ourselves.  

All need to be saved!

All Can Be Saved

That was the bad news; now here’s the good news: all can be saved!
We can’t rely on our own efforts to save us.  But we can be saved by relying entirely on what God himself has done for us.

Jesus reminds Nicodemus about an incident in the history of Israel when the people yet again grumbled against God and against Moses.  We’re told that God sent venomous snakes among them in judgement.  Many Israelites were bitten and died.  The people repented of their grumbling and asked for mercy, so God told Moses to make a model snake and put it up on a pole and promised that “anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” (Num 21:8.) And that’s what happened!

Imagine it!  You’re bitten by a snake; you know you’re going to die.  What do you do?  Try your best to ignore the poison?  Or look at the snake on the pole and rely on God’s sure promise?

Now, Jesus points out to Nicodemus that the snake on the pole is a figure of Messiah.  Just as the snake was lifted up, so must Messiah be lifted up.  Just as looking at the snake and relying on God’s promise saved the Israelites, so also those who look to Messiah and rely on God’s promise can be saved. 

OK, let’s quote that famous verse: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

But God didn’t just send Jesus to the world as a role model.  John tells us that Jesus didn’t come to condemn us; he came to rescue us from condemnation.  He came with a very particular purpose.  When Jesus spoke about the Son of Man having to be lifted up he foretold his death on the cross and the necessity of it.

The cross of Christ brings the enormity of our sin and cancels it out by the immensity of God’s love; at the cross, Jesus took on himself God’s just penalty for our sin (“… the wages of sin is death…”) and opened the way for us to receive God’s compassionate mercy.

God wants all to be saved.  He didn’t love merely a few: he loved the whole world.  The offer of salvation is not just to a few: the offer is to “whoever”.

All can be saved, but not all will be saved.  You see, there’s a condition: we must believe.  To be healed from the snake bite the Israelites had to go a look at the model snake in reliance on God’s promise.  To be saved from condemnation we have to recognise the futility of our own efforts and rely on Christ’s sacrifice at the cross as full payment for our rescue, forgiveness and redemption.

All can be saved!

All Can Know They Are Saved

All Can Know They Are Saved.  Let me ask you, do you know you’re saved?  Do know what it is to be born again, born of the Spirit?  Do you have assurance of your salvation?

If you are relying on Jesus to save you, what can you bank on? 

Verse 17: Jesus himself came for the very purpose of saving us.  Jesus cried out on the cross, “It is finished.”  The language there means, “It is accomplished.”  Jesus succeeded in his mission.  Our penalty was paid and our salvation secured.  

The Hymn-writer Horatio Spafford expressed his assurance like this:

My sin – O the bliss of this glorious thought –
My sin – not in part but the whole –
Is nailed to his cross; and I bear it no more;
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.
    It is well with my soul…

Verse 18: Whoever believes in him is not condemned.  Charles Wesley expressed his assurance like this:

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine,
bold I approach the eternal throne,
and claim the crown, through Christ, my own.

Verse 16: those who believe shall not perish.  Jesus didn’t fail!  Salvation for those who rely on him is certain!

All Can Be Saved To The Uttermost

All can be saved to the uttermost.  I’ve heard it said that “Jesus can save you from the gutter-most to the uttermost.”  

We’ve probably all heard testimonies of people who were utterly destitute in body, mind and spirit meeting Jesus and being lifted out of their mess, being completely reoriented, and going on to live purposeful lives of Christian service.  I came across an amazing story only this week.  

Most of us have probably never been in such dire straights, but we all need picking up, turning around and being set on a new course.

In this life, here on earth, God begins the transformation of our living, renewing in us the image of his Son.  But there’s more good news!  This isn’t all there is!  

Verses 15 and 16 talk about those who believe having eternal life.  We have a solid hope of better things to come beyond our lives in this world.  

This hope of eternal life can help us in the here-and-now too.  Many of us – especially those of us who are older – may feel like the pandemic has robbed us of a year of our lives, and we might not have many left!  I can understand that; it’s hardly been an unending round of pleasure.  But I’m not letting myself be despondent about that:  I have eternity in view!

I was once in a meeting where Richard Wurmbrand was being interviewed.  He was a Romanian pastor who was tortured in a communist prison for 14 years because of his faith.  He was asked if he felt bitter about the lost time.  He said, “I’m not bitter.  I have all of eternity ahead of me.  What is 14 years?”

Now, we don’t know what eternal life will be like.  It may be very like this world but without its problems.  And it won’t be boring.  It won’t be endless monotony stretched out forever ahead of us.  God will be there!  We will be with him!  There’ll be a wedding feast!  And that’s just the start of it!

Psalm 16 says, “You make known to me the path of life; you fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

There are no half-measures with God—he saves us to the uttermost!

Summary

• All need to be saved. Have you recognised your need of a Saviour?  Have you given up trying to save yourself?
• All can be saved.  God has given sure and certain promises that whoever relies on Jesus will be saved.
• All can know they are saved.  Do you have that assurance?  What are you trusting in?
• All can be saved to the uttermost.  Allow God to renew his image in your life in this world, and fill you with joy for the hope that lies before you in eternity.

Amen!

Be Transformed!

Reading

Romans 12:1-2

Introduction

I’ve been asked to consider the question How can we be discipled? using Romans 12:1-2 as the basis for my response.  There’s so much in these two verses that it’s almost impossible to do them justice in the limited time available – but let’s see what we can do!

Responding to God’s Mercy

Paul makes an appeal to the Roman believers, and that same appeal comes down through the centuries to us here today.  He urges them, and us, to live differently, with the only response that makes any sense in the light of what God has done for us.

Up to this point in Romans, Paul has been arguing that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (3:23-24). 

We all of us, when apart from Christ, stood condemned before God, without remedy.  There was nothing we could do to save ourselves.  Absolutely nothing!  In Colossians 1:13, Paul writes of how God has, “rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

We couldn’t save ourselves; we needed to be rescued.  God, through the Lord Jesus, did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves.  He paid the price of our redemption so that the darkness has no more right to hold dominion over us; he broke the power of sin.  Through the once-for-all, final blood sacrifice of Jesus at the cross, he paid the penalty of our sins so that we could know forgiveness and freedom from guilt.

God loves us so much that he gave us Jesus so that, simply through faith, we could escape condemnation and inherit everlasting life.  We deserved justice; God has shown us mercy!

Sacrificial Living

God’s mercy is the basis of Paul’s appeal.  How should we live in response to God’s mercy?  Paul writes, “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God”.

Jesus offered himself in sacrifice for us and, as his disciples, we too are called to live sacrificially.  We should live in such a way that our bodies are temples appropriate for the Holy Spirit to dwell in.  We’re to live in holiness, in ways that please God, not pursuing personal gratification. 

As a way of understanding what holiness means, one definition I came across tells us that holy things are “not for ordinary use.”  We’re set apart especially for God.

Then Paul says of this kind of living, “this is your true and proper worship.”  Worship, you see, isn’t just something we do on a Sunday.  All of life is to be our expression of worship.  Actually, I think the Authorised Version expresses the original Greek more directly.  It says, “[this] is your reasonable service.”  In the light of God’s mercy, there’s nothing unreasonable in how Paul is urging us to live.

How can we be discipled?  Well, the first thing is to recognise that discipleship is not an optional extra for enthusiasts.  All who call themselves Christians are to be disciples.

Transformed Living

So what does a disciple look like?  Paul goes on with, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed…”

We live in challenging times.  I’m not referring to the pandemic.  Our society has largely abandoned Christian values.  Anything goes.  You can do what you like, and who is anyone else to tell you otherwise.  

Remember that God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness.  Our society remains under that dominion.  We, as disciples, cannot blithely go along with everything that goes on in society.  If we do that, we’re putting ourselves back under the dominion of darkness.  

We are called to live counter-culturally.  We’re in the world but we’re not to be of the world.  We have to show the world what the kingdom of the Son is like.  It’s easy to run with the crowd.  It’s easy to swim with the current.  But the crowd is stumbling in the darkness, and the current will wash you out to sea…

Two caterpillars were sitting on a leaf, and a butterfly flew past.  One caterpillar said to the other, “You’ll never get me up in one of those things!”  The caterpillar is, of course, the larval stage of a butterfly.  The adult stage is the actual butterfly.  Once the caterpillar’s eaten enough of your garden, it pupates and becomes dormant.  Some time afterwards, the adult butterfly emerges.

The process inside the pupa is mysterious.  The insect undergoes a complete structural reorganisation: caterpillar in, butterfly out!  The scientific term for what goes on inside the pupa is the Greek word ‘metamorphosis’.  We could express its literal meaning as to become a different form or shape.

Now, in the Greek, Paul uses the same word: ‘be metamorphosed.’  Paul wants his Roman readers to undergo a radical restructuring, a change in the shape of things.

Why do we need to be transformed?  When we come to Christ, we come just as we are, bringing with us baggage from our old way of life; a way of life that held us in darkness.

As disciples, we have to unlearn sinful ways, things that have perhaps been infused into us throughout our lives.  Then, instead of doing things our own way, or the world’s way, we have to learn to do things God’s way. 

God’s aim for us, as Paul says in chapter 8:29, is that we “be conformed to the image of his Son…” He wants us to bear the family likeness.  I want to be like Jesus!  Do you?

How can we be discipled?  The second thing is to recognise and accept that discipleship will mean personal and radical change.  

Food for Thought

Now, I’ve talked of this transformation as a change of shape.  After Christmas, some of us perhaps had a great desire to change our shape and set about the task by joining Weight Watchers (other dieting franchises are available).  But we’re not talking here about diet . . . or are we?

Paul tells us that transformation comes about “by the renewing of your mind.”  Our minds are important.  What we think governs how we behave.  There’s a saying that goes, “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a lifestyle; sow a lifestyle, reap a destiny.”

The renewal process begins when we hear and respond to the gospel.  It continues as we learn of Christ as his disciples.  We need to feed the renewal process. 

What are you exposing your mind to?  What spiritual food are you eating?  If you rely only on what you get on a Sunday in church, you’re on a starvation diet!  If you relied on your Sunday lunch to get you through the whole week, what state would you be in by Wednesday?  Just as you need physical food every day, so you need spiritual food each day! 

As a preacher, I have a responsibility to provide spiritual food for you; to use scripture to teach, exhort, encourage, admonish and inspire you, but what you do with what you hear is your responsibility.  Paul implies his readers must choose not to conform, and choose to be transformed, and choose the renewal of their thinking.

Make use of the means of grace that God has provided.  Think about the things you hear on a Sunday.  Read your Bible, Old as well as New Testament, follow a reading plan if that would help.  Don’t just say prayers but learn to commune with God in prayer. 

Another excellent way of being fed spiritually is to join a small group.  From many years of involvement with home groups, I can say that small groups are a fantastic way of encouraging disciples.  It’s been great seeing people grow in faith and knowledge of God.  It’s kind-of how Jesus did it with his inner twelve.  It’s how the Wesleys grew the Methodist movement in the first place!  Churches that are growing tend to have small groups based on worship, bible study, prayer and the sharing of life.

How can we be discipled?  The third thing is to follow a healthy, nutritious spiritual diet.  Take responsibility for you own growth.  Use the means of grace God gives; join a small group to worship, study, pray and share with other disciples.

Reap the Benefits

Now, metamorphosis may not always be pleasant but the outcome is glorious.  There have been times in my journey when I’ve felt crushed as God has unearthed the next thing in my life he wants to sort out.  But he only has in mind what’s best for me as he refines me, and I’m more like Jesus now than I was when I started.  There’s still a lot of work to be done…

But Paul tells us that, along the way, we’ll learn what God is like and how to recognise his will for us, and that his will is the very best for our lives.  He says, “Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Summary

So, How can we be discipled?
    • Recognise that discipleship is for all Christians, not just the enthusiastic few.
    • Accept that discipleship will mean personal and radical change, for the good.
    • Learn to feed yourself daily with a nutritious spiritual diet.
    • Join a group that will support you in your discipleship.
 

Don’t stay as a caterpillar; become a beautiful butterfly!