Success through Change

1 Kings 8:44-49;
Matthew 18:1-4; Romans 12:1-2

This morning, as we continue with our series on “Living God’s
plan for a successful ministry”, we come to the theme, “Success through
change”. I remind you again, as we have been doing each week, that when we talk
about a successful ministry, we are talking about our ministries as friends,
spouses, parents, colleagues, employees, employers, friends, etc. Although
these principles can obviously be applied by those in full-time Christian ministry,
or by those who are involved in a church ministry … they are primarily for
the Christian life in general … because all of Christian life is ministry.

So today’s theme is “success through change”. If you are in a
cell group, you may have been expecting a message based on Joseph in Genesis
41. However, as I prepared for today I felt led in a slightly different
direction, so please bear with me and, in your cell groups, enjoy learning the
same lessons from a different Bible passage.

Change is an exciting, yet very difficult aspect of life.

Change is difficult

It is difficult because of the way we are as human beings.
God has designed us as creatures of routine and habit. It is part of His way of
making life that little bit easier to cope with. It’s as though he has built
into us this ability to go onto autopilot once we have established a habit or
routine. It takes so much less energy for us to do things exactly the way we’ve
always done them. So, for example, when we get up in the morning we normally go
through exactly the same routine every single day, except maybe weekends. I
won’t embarrass anyone by asking what your routine is in the morning … but if
we all sit down and think about it we’ll easily be able to say what we do and
in what order every single morning.

Now this is a blessing from God. It is given to us to make it
easier for us to walk in God’s ways. So we read that Jesus had certain habits.
We read in Luke 4:16 that He went up to the synagogue on the Sabbath “as was
His custom”. The Psalmist also tells us that he had the habit that “every day I
praise You and I will extol Your name for ever and ever.” (Ps. 145:2) Doing the
right thing every day makes it easier for us to do the right thing! We get into
a Godly habit … and that is why God has created us with this innate ability
to form habits and customs.

However, this ability can also lead to evil habits. Psalm
140:2 speaks of those who “devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war
every day.” These evil men were in the habit of living in such a way as to
cause harm to others. They did it every day. And we don’t need to be told about
bad habits. We all have them … ranging from picking our noses to swearing at
taxi drivers. So an ability that God intended for good, can easily be applied
for evil as well. The choice is ours.

So God made us to form habits … wanting us to form good
ones … but whether our habits are good or bad, they are difficult to break!
The old saying, “I’m in a rut” refers to the days when people travelled by ox
cart. As the carts travelled along they would cut ruts into the veld. As other
carts followed in their “footsteps” (so to speak) they would cut the same rut
deeper. Eventually a cart travelling along that route could desire to turn off
in another direction but find their wheels unable to turn out of the deep ruts
that had been cut in the veld. If you’ve ever driven down a secondary road in
the Free State you know how modern day ox-carts – called trucks – can also cut
ruts into the road and we find ourselves a drivers driving in grooves in the
tar road. When you try to turn out of them the car pulls against your attempts.
It can be quite dangerous.

In life … change is like that! When we want to change
something we find that our will is working against an invisible force. We call
it the force of habit.

 

Change is exciting

However, change can also be very exciting. Just ask the
teenager who gets a new cell-phone … or the person who buys a new car … or
gets a promotion … or a young person falling in love with a new “significant
other”. At the other end of the scale we see the excitement of someone who goes
for an eye operation and can suddenly see again … the excitement of the
elderly residents of a block of flats when a lift is installed for the first
time … or when the kids move back into the neighbourhood and they get to see
the grandchildren every day! For me personally it doesn’t even have to be that
exciting to excite me. I enjoy change so much that even moving the furniture
around gives me a new lease of life!

Change excites us. There is the power of novelty and newness
that revs us up for change. Yet, some of us are more excited by change than
others. And my personal theory is that a lot of that does have to do with age … but not because older people are meant
to find change less exciting … it’s just that older people generally have
spent longer travelling in the same “rut” and so change can become more
difficult than it is exciting!

 

Change in Christian
living

This message is about the Biblical reasons why we may be
called to change our course of action – even in the ministry or in our
Christian lives. We need to be open to the call of the Lord to change direction
or to change strategy in a similar way to which Moses had to make corrections
to the Israelites course through the wilderness in obedience to the moving of
the fiery cloud; in the same way that Paul had to change his direction when the
he tells us in Acts that “Spirit of Jesus would not allow us to enter” a
particular place; in the same way that Joseph had to change strategy when the
food began to run out; in the same way that Jesus left places and instructed
the disciples to sometimes wipe the dust of a place off their feet.

When going through life as a follower of Jesus Christ one
thing is for sure … change will always be a part of our lives. Why is that? I
believe it is because for growth to happen change has to happen … and Jesus
always wants us to be growing. The Father always wants us to be changing into
the likeness of His Son Jesus Christ. So change is inevitable in the Christian
life. None of us have arrived … and until we have arrived (in heaven that is)
we will constantly be called to change … in order that we may grow.

I think that what I’m about to say is probably the most
important statement I could make to you as a preacher. It is the most important
realization for every Christian to come to. Here it comes in paragraph form:

God has got every one of us on a
journey. It is not a journey to a promised land of wealth and health and
pleasure. God has us on a journey towards the promised land of CHRIST-LIKENESS!

I need to get that truth into my thick skull if I am going to
find any fulfilment in my Christian life … and you all need to realise it
too. Success in the Christian life is not about being richer or happier or more
successful or more comfortable or more popular … success in the Christian life is about being more CHRIST-LIKE!!

• To
  be a successful Christian pastor is to be Christ-like pastor!
• To
  be a successful Christian businessman is to be a Christ-like businessman!
• To
  be a successful Christian mother is to be a Christ-like mother!

So now does it make more sense when I say that today’s theme
is about success through change??

Let’s briefly look at some of the changes we may be called to
make in order to become more successful in our Christian walk.

Repentance

The most obvious reason for change is when we have wandered
out of the Lord’s will and have drifted into sinful or wicked ways of living.
We call this kind of change repentance.
Repentance is when we make a realisation that the way I’m living … the way
I’m parenting, or being a husband, or behaving at work, or whatever … is not
right! It is not the way God wants me to be behaving. Repentance is also
following up that realization with a decision to make the change to do this
God’s way!

Repentance is the most difficult form of change for a human
being. It involves us surrendering our will to the will of God … and saying
to God, “Lord, it’s no longer about me and what I want or what is comfortable
or pleasurable to me … From now on it’s about You and what You want.”

No Christian life or ministry exists without the occasional
need for repentance and a radical 180% change of direction to get back into the
will of God for our lives and ministries.

Sadly, like for the Israelites in 1 Kings, we often only
realise that we’re far out of the will of God when we start feeling the
consequences of being outside of His will! Remember that God’s will for our lives
is good, pleasing and perfect. Being outside of the will of God leads
inevitably to pain of some kind … most common is the pain of becoming distant
from God and feeling the absolute emptiness of the lack of His presence in our
lives. The Israelites experienced this physically as a sign to us of what
happens spiritually. When they sinned, God allowed them to be taken captive to
a foreign nation. They felt that God was no longer with them because they were
far from the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Temple that held God’s presence.

As I said, this was a sign of what happens to us as people
when we drift out of God’s will for our lives. We drift away from God’s loving
presence. We drift into self-centredness and we cut God out of our lives!
Eventually we begin to feel the empty ache inside of us … a longing for God!
And, as for the Israelites, the only way to deal with that empty longing is
repentance.

1 Kings 8:47-49 is Solomon’s prayer and he pleads with God
that when the Israelites are in exile in a place far from God that, “if they
have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and
plead with you in the land of their conquerors and say, ‘We have sinned, we
have done wrong, we have acted wickedly’; and if they turn back to you with all
their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive, and
pray to you toward the land you gave their fathers, toward the city you have
chosen and the temple I have built for your Name; then from heaven, your
dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause.”

Friends perhaps today you are in a “far-away country”  of some kind in some aspect or area of your
life. Make the decision today to CHANGE!
Repent and return to God. Change your ways and live God’s way!

 

Course adjustment

Sometimes we simply need a “course-adjustment”. We may have been
fully obedient to the Lord but He is calling us to adopt a new strategy or way
of doing things in order to be more effective for His Kingdom and His glory.
Things do not always go the way the Lord has planned for them to go and
sometimes, even though we have been obedient to Jesus’ leading, we might still
have to alter the course of our lives to stay in step with what He is doing.
This is about being wise, discerning and obedient to the revelation God will
give us.

We must remember that we are in a spiritual war and the devil
is actively resisting the will of God. So things will not go smoothly in our
lives just because we’re being obedient to the Lord. Many of us have
experienced this truth when we come home from an amazing spiritual experience
like a camp or an Emmaus Walk or some profound breakthrough in our lives …
only to find that the next day all hell breaks loose. Why? Because the devil is
displeased! But then isn’t it better just to cruise through life and not bother
the devil. Yes … if your aim in life is comfort, that would be true. If, for
you, success means comfort and ease … then for heaven’s sake don’t bother the
devil by trying to be like Jesus! But is success for you means what it means to
God – becoming like Jesus – then our whole approach to life changes. We become
rather weird to the world around us because, as James said in James 1:2-4, we “Consider
it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because we
know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must
finish its work so that we may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Trials and difficulties actually cause us to become more Christ-like … and so
they become God’s servants in our lives … not always and only a work of the
enemy! Even the negative attacks of the enemy in our lives, Jesus transforms
and uses for our ultimate good!

So … as we go through Christian life … we often have to make
course adjustments … but these adjustments are not made on the basis of what
is easiest or most comfortable … they are made on the basis of the revealed
will of God!

So successful Christian living, in part depends on making
constant adjustments in the way we live and act in obedience to our
Spirit-filled conscience and the gentle whisper of the voice of the Lord!

 

Attitude Change

Sometimes we need an attitude change more than an actual
behavioural change. There is something of this in Jesus parable of new wine in
old wineskins. The new attitude is like the new wine that fills us and from
within will begin to transform our behaviour – but to get a lasting behaviour
change what really needs to happen is for new wine to be poured into us. A
change of heart is necessary before we can have a lasting change of behaviour.

Jesus told people that they needed to change and become like
little children. They needed an attitude adjustment – from pride to humility –
from self-dependence to God-dependence!

Sometimes the Lord challenges us that we need to change our
faithless attitudes and become bolder and more faith-filled in our approach to
life and ministry.

And again I’m going to come back to this point and say that
the attitude of a successful Christian is the attitude of desiring above
everything else to be like Jesus. If that is not our top desire then we will
adopt the ways of the world and say that a successful person is someone who has
an attitude of:

• Arrogance;
  self-confidence; drive; determination; ruthlessness, etc.

But if Christlikeness is our top desire then a successful
person is one who has the attitude of:

• Humility;
  honesty; integrity; patience; kindness; selflessness, etc.

 

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