The Journey of Transformation
Romans 12:1-3
Kyle Idelman writes, It was a Thursday afternoon, and I was sitting in our sanctuary where 30,000 people would soon be coming to one of our Easter services. I had no idea what I was going to say to them. I could feel the pressure mounting. I sat there hoping that a sermon would come to mind. I looked around at the empty seats, hoping for some inspiration; instead, there was just more perspiration. I wiped the sweat off my brow and looked down. "This sermon needs to be good," I told myself. There are some people who only come to church on Christmas and Easter. I wanted to make sure they all came back. "What could I say to get their attention? How could I make my message more appealing? Is there something creative I could do that would be a big hit and get people talking?" Still nothing.
There was a Bible on the chair in front of me. I grabbed it, but I couldn't think of one passage that would "wow" them…..Finally, a thought crossed my mind: "I wonder what Jesus taught whenever he had the big crowds." What….I found (is) that when Jesus had large crowds, he would often preach a message that would be more likely to drive listeners away rather than encourage them to return for next week's message. When Easter weekend came, I was so convicted that I stood up and began my sermon with an apology, "I'm sorry for sometimes selling Jesus cheap and watering down the gospel in hopes that more of you would fill these seats." I followed up with a sermon entitled, "Not a Fan." We went word-for-word though Luke 9:23—Jesus' invitation to follow him—and honestly asked ourselves, "Am I a fan or a follower of Jesus?" The dictionary defines fans as "enthusiastic admirers. Jesus was never interested in enthusiastic admirers; he wanted completely committed followers. He wants more from us than a hand raised or a prayer repeated at the end the service. He is looking for more than a prayer before a meal and a Jesus fish on the back of the car. He wants more than fans; he wants followers who take up a cross and die to themselves. And then he writes, “there is no believing without following, no salvation without surrender, no forgiveness without repentance, and no life without death.”
Being a follower of Jesus is more than just admiring Him from a distance or giving him our time on Sunday mornings. It is literally taking on the person, the mind, and the heart of Jesus. We are called to be worshippers with our whole lives not just an audience on Sunday morning. We are called to be servants, not just volunteers. We are called to sacrifice and not just givers. We are called to be followers. A disciple first and foremost means radical life change. When Jesus invited Simon and Andrew to come and follow him, he then said, "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Repent in the original Greek means more than to confess your sins. It literally means to go the opposite direction with your life. It means to go the opposite way the world lives and instead go in the direction of the kingdom. For most of us, that means dramatic life change. Dallas Willard in his book, Renovation of the Heart, writes, “Genuine conversion is a wrenching experience.…It can cause deep and permanent damage to the most intimate of relationships, as Jesus forewarned…..This change is the equivalent of a soul earthquake that leaves nothing unshaken.” For many of us, this means we will need to think differently and it will mean we need to make decisions differently. This and only this will lead to us acting and living differently.
Second being a disciple is a lifelong learner. We should never reach a point in life at which we are no longer learners. That means our spiritual growth should be our main priority so that we then can do the work of the kingdom which is discipling others. So make a commitment to continue to grow spiritually by reading the Bible and praying to God, listening for His voice daily. Worship God every Sabbath. Get in a small group Bible study. Discover your spiritual gift and serve others in the name of Jesus. Intentionally develop relationships with the unchurched and begin to have spiritual conversations with them. As you begin to commit to these practice you will find that you will become more like Jesus.
Third, a disciple is a follower of Jesus and not a fan. The fact of the matter is that most Christians are fans of Jesus rather than followers. And yet Jesus calls us to follow him. We don’t follow Jesus because of who he is. We don’t follow Jesus because of what he taught. We don’t follow Jesus because of what he did. We follow Jesus to become like Him.
And yet when we look at our lives, our behaviors, our attitudes and thoughts, they reflect more of the world than they do Jesus. We seem to be just a faint glimmer or reflection of the One we are seeking to follow. Pastor Zan Holmes tells the story of speaking at another church. They asked him to send his bio so they could give him a proper introduction and his picture so that the person picking him up at the airport would be able to identify him. As he got off the plane, he saw several people with signs and names on them but there was none with his. Then he noticed a woman who was intently looking at a photograph. Zan walked up to her and glanced at his photo and said, “I believe you’re looking for me.” The woman looked at the picture and then Zan and then the picture again, finally saying, “You’re Pastor Holmes? You don’t look like your picture at all!” And then he says, “How true it is for so many of us that we, and our lives, are just a faint resemblance to what Jesus has called us to be.”
In our Scripture passage today, Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed…” There are two words in the original Greek that deserve special attention in this verse. The first is “conformed” which has the connotation in the Greek of outward change but without any inner transformation. The word is also sometimes translated “fashioned.” So Paul is saying, “Do not allow yourself to adopt the fashion of this world, to be forced into its mold.” The second word is “transformed.” This is the Greek word that from which we get the English word “metamorphosis” which speaks of an inner change, and has observable outward manifestations. This is part of the journey of faith as we are being made into the likeness of Jesus in thought, word and deed. Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
And yet this seems to be such a rarity in most Christian’s lives and one reason why the unchurched look at the followers of Jesus and call us hypocrites. William Obalil writes, “I fear that not many weekly churchgoers are equipped to integrate what we hear and affirm in church with the concrete choices faced every day- at home, school, work, and marketplace. The result is functional atheism. Much of the time we operate as if God were not an active factor, let alone a decisive factor, in our decision-making. Yes, we engage discrete religious practices. We go to church. We pray, we read the Bible. We give time and money to acts of mercy….But we also act without considering God as a force to be reckoned with. We weigh a purchase, asking, “Can I afford it?” but not, “Am I being a faithful steward?” We vote with our pocketbooks….We customarily explain what we experience in psychological categories-He has a big ego! She’s depressed-, economic categories- supply and demand- and political categories- human rights. (But do we look at the world as Jesus does through) sin, grace, idolatry, shalom, new creation to understand our lives?”
So we are called to live like Jesus and we begin that transformation through prayer, worship, Bible study, tithing, service and sharing our faith with others. But it doesn’t stop there. We are not only called to live like Jesus, but we called to be like Jesus in our hearts and our minds. Following Jesus is about a personal relationship with Him and letting him teach us who we should be and how we are to live. So over the next four weeks, we’re going to look at what it means to be an apprentice of Jesus. An apprentice is someone who is bound to another for a certain amount of time to learn an art or trade in which the master is an expert. To be a follower of Jesus, to be a disciple of Jesus means to be an apprentice. The Master is Jesus himself. His art or trade is making disciples and doing the will of the Father for the sake of the Kingdom of God. And the amount of time is life-long. This is what as Methodists we call sanctification, the lifelong process of growing to become like Jesus, to live for Him and do His will in every aspect of your life.
This apprenticeship for radical life transformation has four components. The first “element” is actually the Holy Spirit. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is connecting us to experience the fullness of a relationship with God. When a person gives their life to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within them to transform and grow them in Jesus. It is the Spirit that enlivens all our efforts to follow Christ. The Spirit is the presence of God for us to transform us, teach us, encourage us, empower us and guide us in following Jesus so that we become like Jesus in every aspect of our lives.
The second area where change happens is in transforming our narratives. We are a people of the story. We love stories. We’re raised with stories and when something happens to us we turn it into a story. But we are also shaped by our stories. These become our narratives, the stories we live by that give our life purpose and explanation. Often our narratives are at work in our lives without our knowing it. They determine our attitudes, our thoughts, our behavior and our actions. We have narratives about God, our self, others and so forth. But many of us have narratives about God that do not match the narratives of Jesus. Too many of us are living with false narratives which impact our thinking and our feelings about God and ultimately our actions and the lives we lead. For example: we believe we can change ourselves. Isn’t this what the self-help industry is all about? Or we believe that God is a angry and just waiting for us to mess up so He can punish us. Or we believe that God isn’t always good and trustworthy. Or that we must earn God’s grace. We cannot change our behavior until we change the narratives that guide us. So the first thing we need to do is measure our narratives against that of Jesus and see if they match up.
Third is what James Bryan Smith calls soul-training exercises. You may know them as spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines aren’t spiritual at all. When we think these disciplines are spiritual, we pursue them to become more spiritual and are done legalistically to gain favor with God. Soul training exercises are done to change who we are and how we live, to become more like Jesus and thus are critical to life transformation.
The fourth and final component of transformation is community. We are meant to live and love in community. We cannot change on our own. We need other people on the journey with us to encourage and challenge us. Spiritual formation happens most profoundly in the context of a small group. Participating in a group allows us to not only learn from others but to receive their encouragement and challenge to spur us on in the journey of faith and transformation.
Illustration? As we come to know the God that Jesus knows, it is natural for us to fall more deeply in love with God. As we fall more deeply in love with God and recognize God’s provision and love for us, our lives start to look different. We begin to think and act like Jesus. That means a life apart from anger, lust, lying, vain glory and the like? How is that is possible? As we grow in understanding where we are—in God’s wondrous kingdom—and who we are—people indwelt by Christ. As our hearts are changed, our lives begin to change and the ultimate expression of this change comes in our relationships with others. Just as our perception of God and our self is transformed and healed, so too we begin to see other people as precious children of God.
