Why does sometimes the change seem so slow?
This happens more promptly in some folks than others. Because, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come Sometimes people ask, ‘why don’t we see a lot of change? Why don’t we see all these folks living but for Christ, and neighbor. Well once a man was asked, “Sir, are you a Christian?” And he thought about it for a few moments and then replied, “Well, Yes, in spots.” That is all of us to some degree. The power is there to make us new. But we hold back. We hold pieces of our self back. It’s like that old Joke, ‘How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.’ There is something new in us. The power is there. But we have a role to play in changing as well. We have to be willing to change. We have to run with the ball, give up what is hurtful from the past and live the new life. I read a fairy tale the other day. Once a beggar dressed in rags went begging at a palace door. The King opened to him and had mercy on him and gave him a set of his own royal robes to wear. ‘Here take these and put them on’ the king said. And the beggar did. The king said as he left him, ‘With these you won’t need those old rags anymore’ The beggar thanked the King profusely as he left, but as he was leaving, he looked over at his old rags lying on the floor. He thought, ‘but what if I do need them?’ And so he scooped them up under his arm as he left and carried them everywhere he went begging, just in case he needed them one day. Carrying a bundle of rags got in the way of all the other things he did in life. And the people around him thought it was odd that a man dressed in royal robes carried a bundle of rags around. They started laughing at him behind his back and called him, ‘the old man with the rags’. Years later when the beggar lay dying, the king came to visit him. The beggar saw the sad look on the king’s face when the king saw the old bundle of rags he was still clutching to his side. And he realized what it had cost him to carry a bundle of rags through life.
Learn to let go