Transformation

(home made parachute)

How would you like to go parachuting with a homemade parachute? If you were going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane do you think you would want to get a little bit of information about the process first, to get some idea of what you were doing before you did it?

When I was in the Navy I went to a Navy School for my job and when we got close to graduation we decided on a class trip. We were in Virginia close to the Rappahannock river so we decide to ride the rapids. None of us had ever done it before but we were young and invincible so we rented 6 canoes from the base and went. Did you know there is a difference between river canoes and lake canoes, we didn’t. Have you ever seen a canoe hit a rock head on and bend completely in half, I have. We also learned that there are markers in the river that have a green, yellow and red stripe depending on the water level. All we saw was a little tiny bit of the red, it’s a wonder no one got hurt.

Some people approach the christian life in the same way, I don’t know what I am doing but I am going to jump in and start doing it. Now in the beginning that is the only choice you have unless you can find a guide. By the way I went down the rapids in Colorado with an experienced guide and it was a lot more fun, and safer. Having a guide is what we call mentoring, someone who has experience who can help you along the way. When you first jump by parachute they strap you into a tandem chute with an instructor who does all the work so you can see how it is done, with a real parachute too.

One of the spiritual disciplines I want to talk about today is often called bible study. I want to call it something else because I am not sure that bible study is enough. Now don’t get all in a uproar, I didn’t say that bible study is not important, it is, but it is not enough.

Suppose you someone had a photographic memory and they read the bible cover to cover, when they were through they could quote any passage you named word for word and cite the scripture reference- would that make them saved? Of course not. In fact there are lots of people who know the bible better than most Christians who study it just to try to prove that it is wrong.

What if someone not only knew the words of the bible but also understood what it meant. I admit that sometimes I struggle to understand the meaning of some passages or to figure out how to apply some of the Bible’s lessons. There is a commandment that says thou shalt not kill and another passage that says if someone commits adultery you should stone them to death. Joshua was told by god to wipe out entire people groups and king David was killed tens of thousands and was called a man after God’s own heart. I can explain most of this with the difference between murder, capital punishment, and war but I am not sure I understand how to apply this in every possible situation. Even if I did understand every nuance of God’s view on murder, war, punishment and death that understanding would not necessarily prevent me from doing the wrong thing. It is obvious that it is not enough to just know the bible or even to just understand the bible, something else is required.

I once knew a man who had a lot of book knowledge but could not put it into practice. He knew a lot of information but he was practically useless in the field, surely that is not what God wants from his people.

What God wants is not study or knowledge or even understanding but transformation.

Paul put it this way

Romans 12:1–2 NASB95

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is. How do you prove it, you prove something by trying it out and proving that it works. God explained this to Joshua when Joshua took over from Moses

Joshua 1:7–8 NASB95

“Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

The goal of bible study, mentoring, and other disciplines is for us to be transformed into the image of Christ. The goal is to transform us, to make us look like God. After all we were created in the image of God and God never intended for us to remake ourselves into something else, but we did. When sin entered the world we changed. We became something else. Adam was the first man made by God and he was also the first self made man.

When God created Adam he created him in his own image, he created him perfect. When Adam sinned he became something God did not intend for him to be, we inherited our created life and our recreated life from Adam. If is God’s intention that we should leave behind the recreated life that Adam left us and be re-recreated back to what God had always intended for us to be. It is not a new thing God is doing it is a return to the thing God had always intended. After all if something is perfect and you change it then it becomes imperfect. In order for it to be perfect again you have to change it back as if the change never happened at all. That is why God says we have to become a new creation, that we have to be transformed and renewed.

When we talked about prayer we talked about the fact that God’s idea of prayer is not that we should change our circumstances, or change God’s mind, but that our mind would be changed to line up with what God knows to be true and right. It is not enough to just tell God what we think we need to come to understand what God thinks and think that way ourselves.

Like wise it is not enough to study the bible for the sake of study or even for the sake of understanding it. We study the bible so that its meaning, its ideas and its commands can sink into us and become part of us so that we can be transformed from what we are now into what God wants us to be, into his image. I call this spiritual discipline transformation because it is not just bible study it is being transformed into God’s image.

Some people are good at learning from books and for them bible study can be a great transformative thing in their life. Other people learn best by doing and may grow and transform more quickly by on the job training, what we call mentoring, that is OK as long as the transformation occurs. The goal is transformation not study. Prayer, study and practice are all legitimate means of being transformed into the image of God. As Christians it is our job to be constantly growing and constantly transforming minds and our lives into the image of God.

If there is a perfect way to parachute, one which will provide the best experience and the safest experience, if there is the perfect parachute or the perfect way to land wouldn’t you want to get as close to perfect as you could get if you are going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Wouldn’t you want to use every method at your disposal in order to do the best you possibly could? Read the manual,talk to the experts, watch what they do and anything else you can think of to make sure that this works out for the best.

If you are going to live in the world that God made, If you are going to be subject to the will of God and the judgement of God, and everybody is, then wouldn’t it make sense to do everything you could do to make sure you do it right and that it works out for the best. If you want to be a Christian, if you want to follow Christ shouldn’t you use every means at your disposal to do ti right, to be transformed into the very image of Christ, to renew your mind and transform your life into who and what God always intended for you to be.

If God created you to be conformed to his image and he is providing you with the means to become transformed and renewed, It is what God wants for you and what he commands you to do then why would you not do so. Read your bible, meditate on God’s word, learn from others who have learned from God, hear the word of God and its interpretation, learn how to apply the principals of God’s word in your life and let all of those things renew your mind and transform your life.

Then you will be as Joshua was

Joshua 1:8 NASB95

“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

Do you want to be prosperous, do you want to be successful, then be transformed into the image of God. After all it is God’s world made according to God’s rules, if you want to be successful in God’s world learn God’s rules and let them transform you into God’s image. Nothing else will ever give you the kind of success that God himself will give you, nothing else comes close.