Imagine someone has been attending church for 20 years and one day they say to themselves: “I come every Sunday year after year, but I haven’t changed”. Can that be possible?
While pastoring, I discovered a spiritual survey written by Fortune 500 personnel. I had the congregation I served take this test twice, two years apart, hoping to discern the status of spiritual change within our church family. The results were the most enlightening in many ways. Perhaps the most shocking discovery for me was that we had people who had been stalled in the spiritual “babe stage” (compared to birth through age 5) for 25 years or more! And when a person is still living on milk, it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life [a babe] and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian (Hebrews 5:13, TLB)! Of course, every church should have a reasonable number of new believers, but it showed we had about 25% in our church family at this stage. That meant of that 25%, over half had not changed in that many years. I was stunned and appalled!
John wrote we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 1 John 4:16 (ESV) This refers to two separate factors, knowing and believing. Salvation occurs when a person takes knowing the facts of God’s love to the next stage of believing. Believing occurs when the person takes the next step and acts on what they know.
This distinction brings Jesus’ insightful words to mind. He said these words after referencing the context of environmental hostility among nations and the nuclear family. He also prophesied false prophets would be within the church. The provoking thought is, the one who endures to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:13, ESV). This means only those who are actively continuing in these adverse and abusive conditions to be changed into the likeness of Jesus will enter His Heaven. We find the promising factor is found in maintaining a heart that might replicate a continual altar of sacrificing self to God. He rewards those who continually strive to reflect a light, not strive to shine; but to pursue the inner passion He planted within us to be His trustworthy apprentice. In doing this, we don’t discipline ourselves to change. We change as naturally as a tomato seed evolves into producing tomatoes. It is NOT as complicated as it appears!
Studies have shown, the most dramatic change agent to becoming like Jesus is as simple (and challenging) as consistently reflecting on what the Bible tells us. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right (2 Timothy 3:16, NLT2). We don’t need all the tools a mechanic needs to fix a broken car; we only need to know and believe. That is to know how much God loves us and believe it, which means to practice what the owner’s manual teaches and empowers us to do. The priority Jesus taught us was to be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things (Matthew 6:33, TEV).
What might you see how God’s Spirit has changed you in the last 25 years? …in the recent 6-12 months?