Soma

As I stood on the bus this morning and the hordes of high-schoolers poured into and out of the seats, I had a realization that put a smile on my face: my life’s changing.  I realized that in the past month, there have been a number of ways that the knowledge I have gained (whether directly from the Word of God, or in the context of my pre-existing understanding of the Word of God) has changed my life.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article about kidney transplants that challenged the way I thought about loving my neighbor as myself.  Now, I have an appointment early next month to do a bunch of tests and see if I can be a kidney donor.  A week or so before that (I can’t even remember how!) I stumbled across a post on a blog (a blog for women, mind you,…seriously I can’t remember how) that talked about the discipline of getting up early and preparing for the day by spending (un-rushed!) time with the Lord.  I was convicted about how my mornings had become rushed and my spiritual preparation limited, and within a week both Lara and I were getting up an hour to an hour and a half earlier than we had before (we are also going to bed earlier and not wasting as much time at night).

In addition, after being convicted by the truth regarding the tongue in James, I have consistently been less mocking, joking, and un-eddifying in the way I speak.  This has caused me to talk less, and even be a little less funny (as if that was possible!), but it has been a necessary step towards obedience.  This past week, I realized that it’s cheaper for me to ride the bus to the places I need to go than to drive and that I can meet far more non-believers that way than I can alone in my car (where I’m annoyed by them) so I’m trying that out as well (it’s still in the experimental stage).

I could continue on, but I think you get the point.  My goal in sharing these things with you is not to demonstrate how great I am (the fact that these areas needed to change is demonstration enough that I am still a desperate sinner), but to demonstrate the reality that our lives should always be changing.

Too much of the time we hear truth or gain knowledge and it doesn’t change us at all.  We like what we hear, and may even be “moved” by it, but it never changes our day to day lives.  We just put it in our “knowledge” bank and go on our mery way.  James also has something to say about that:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

So, what about you?  Have you learned something this week?  Have you read the Word of God?  Have you heard a sermon?  If so, how have you changed?  What is different about your life after hearing what you heard?  Is anything?

I plan to learn something tomorrow when I open my Bible.  As a result, I plan to change tomorrow.  I plan to become more like Christ tomorrow.  Because, if I learn something and nothing about the way I live changes it means I’ve forgotten who I am.

So, after reading this post what is going to change about your life?  Is anything?

It’s been an interesting week.  At just about every turn, I seem to be needing to repent, apologize, and ask for forgiveness.  In fact, I think that since Sunday I have had to ask for forgiveness from just about every one of the people closest to me.  And all for different reasons!  I’m tempted to chalk it up to a rough week, and me just being a little extra sinful, but I think that’s a little too simple.  The truth is, I don’t think I’ve been all that more sinful this week than other weeks, I’ve just been more sensitive to my sin and actually sought to remedy it instead of cover it up, or pretend it’s not there.  I seem to be really good at emphasizing my godly motives for things while hiding my sinful and selfish motives.  I guess Jeremiah got it right (17:9):

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

But, in light of the gospel, I’ve been realizing how foolish it is to pretend that I’m not the sinner that I am.  I, too, desperately need God’s continuing grace.  Honestly, it’s been kind of embarrassing.  Even with someone who knows me as well as my wife, it’s not all that easy to confess, repent and depend on her to forgive me.  But, it sure is sweet to receive forgiveness and to know that I am forgiven in that exact same way by God.

One of the things that has prompted me in this direction and helped to expose the sin in my heart has been a section I came across in a book I’m reading by Stuart Scott (not this one, this one).  In regards to relationships (all kinds of relationships) there are a number of pitfalls that we all have a propensity to fall into.  Reading this section felt like reading a list of my shortcomings in many of my relationships.  The five pitfalls he lists are:

1. Not Pursuing Christ First and Foremost
2. Pride (self-exalting pride and self-centered pride)
3. Sinful Communication
4. A Lack of Appreciation and Thankfulness
5. Self-focused Expectations

Perhaps this list will cause you to think through your own heart and motives in your relationships.  If it does, I hope God embarassingly reveals the sin in your heart and humbles you, as He continues to do me.  And I pray that that embarassment does not lead to despair, but to humble trust in the infinite grace of our incredible God who is “slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness.”