Are You the Same Person?

One of the most amazing things about the human body is that our cells are constantly replacing themselves. Our cells have a lifespan, but the good news is that, when they die, they are replaced by other cells. This happens all over our body all the time.

What’s even more amazing then that, is the fact that Stanford researchers were actually able to put a timeline on this process. They figured out that as a whole your body replaces itself completely with new cells every 7-10 years.

That’s crazy. Think about it. You are a completely different person then you were 10 years ago! The eyes you look out of are not the same eyes that you saw out of ten years ago. They’ve been replaced. Your hands aren’t the same hands, your lungs aren’t the same lungs, your brain isn’t the same brain. Instead, over the past 10 years you’ve been gradually made into a new person. And you didn’t have to do anything! As I thought about that, I thought about how easily that that fact can relate to our spiritual lives. I worry that one of the greatest problems in our modern-day church is complacency. A stubbornness, repulsion, or ignorance to the change the God wants to make in the heart of us all–not just once, but daily.

Through His Holy Spirit, God’s desire is to form us and change us every single day and make us look more and more like Christ. And if we surrender to that sanctifying work of the Spirit, if we seek it, then we are never going to be the same. When we look back into the past, it’s easy to see that we are no longer the same person. Why? Because God has been doing a work in my heart and life. I don’t fall into the same traps that I used to. I don’t get angry about the same things or impatient about the same things. I don’t believe the same lies. And God’s called me to new things.

It’s just like our cells, daily dying and replacing themselves so that we are continually being made new. We, too, daily and continuously surrender ourselves over to Christ so that we too may day and be given new life in him.

This comes from Romans 6:

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Just like our cells, may we die to sin, and find new life in Christ daily.

The difference between our spiritual life and our bodies, is that our bodies die and create new cells without any work on our part. It does it automatically. You have no say in the matter. In 10 years you won’t have any of the same cells that you have today and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

But with our spiritual bodies, in order to be made new, we have a part to play. Can you imagine if you were able to control the creation of your cells? If one day you decided, you know what, I’m pretty happy and content with my cells, and my hands, and my brain, I believe I’ll just leave things as they are. If your cells didn’t have the opportunity to be recreated, then what would happen? Well, you’d surely die.

And we will find the same outcome if we decide to remain complacent in the midst of our spiritual lives as well. If we decide that newness is not for us and we do not seek the change of the Holy Spirit, then spiritual death is surely what awaits us.

If we are ever to beat the battle of complacency, there are certain things that you and I must do. Firstly, we must seek to be challenged. Many times, the root of complacency lies in the fact that we no longer like to be challenged. We hold fast to our ideals and we are comfortable with our places in life, and we don’t want anybody or anything to come against that. And so we put up walls against being challenged.

What is necessary, is that once more we allow ourselves to be challenged by preaching, by teaching, and by Scripture. Whether it is on a Sunday morning, or in Sunday School, in a small group, or in your favorite reading chair. What is required us us is to be open to the challenges that we encounter in God’s Scripture. Because what you will find is rarely does Scripture encourage us to keep living as we are. But it is always calling us to live an alternative narrative. A narrative that will pull us out of complacency and into a life constantly being measured up to the life of Christ and found lacking. And that is where we need to be.

And secondly, the most important thing is that we must seek out the power of the Holy Spirit through perfect surrender. If you want to experience the newness, and the richness, and the fullness, of the life that God wants you to have, the one thing you need to do is come to him with an attitude of complete surrender, saying Lord, I need more of you and less of me. I cannot live through my own strength and wisdom, but Lord I need to be changed by your Holy Spirit.

And God is faithful in answering that prayer. But God doesn’t just want to answer that prayer today. But he wants to answer it tomorrow and the next day and the next day. We have to continually offer ourselves up to God, seeking the newness that he wants to provide for us every single. That is where true change occurs and that is how we battle against the dangers of complacency.

May we be a people who look back on our lives and see that we have never been the same but instead we find that we have been constantly changed by the Holiness and the power of God.