Isn’t it amazing the onslaught that rises up to attack when we step out to do something different than what we’ve always done? Francis Chan described this very thing in his book Crazy Love, “Not being able to fully understand God is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have the right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending. What a stunted, insignificant god that would be!”
Things aren’t so different from Jesus’ day when the Pharisees stood back in pride to criticize, rather than enter in. We can see all through history how one move of God condemned the way God decided to move the next time.
Scripture tells us, “For as a man thinks in his heart, so he is” (Proverbs 23:7), however, we forget that what we perceive is what we will receive. Another way to say it is, what got us to where we are now, won’t get us to where we are going. The kind of thinking that caused our problems will not solve them. We have to change our minds to move out of where we are and into what God has available for us. Change requires radical adjustments. To experience change, requires change!
I remember sitting in my own irrelevant word after years of being a Christian, until I decided to let God rewire my thinking and align it with His. And that didn’t mean what I thought I knew about Him. It meant throwing out what I knew and letting Him recalibrate my thinking.
The same principle applies when teaching one of my workshops. I have discovered the first thing that has to be dealt with is the issue of a pliable heart. I don’t want to waste time sowing valuable seed into hard soil. When we are unteachable we are unchangeable and the soil of our heart will not receive new life.
Sadly as in Jesus day, Pharisees will take on useless arguments about God, rather than enter into life changing relationship with Him, as described in John Ortberg’s words from, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, “If you don’t become changed from the inside out-if we don’t morph- we will be tempted to find external methods to satisfy our need to feel that we’re different from those outside the faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed.”
I for one want to humble myself. I want God to continually challenge my paradigms, so that I can change and receive more from Him. I want to feed the words, "...let God transform you by changing the way you think." (Romans 12:2 NLT)
