Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

In our first two posts, we posed the problem (here and here). How does a Christian grow, and specifically, what is the Christian’s role in that growth? Last week we began to outline what that role is, looking specifically at five actions which a Christian can engage to create the proper environment for growth. Those five are

1. Know who you are
2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you
3. Put yourself in the way of grace
4. Mortify sin
5. Rejoice in the gospel

Keep in mind that all of these are important all at once. These are not five steps to holiness; they are five realities which create the environment in which change occurs. Today we consider the second:

2. Seek the work of God’s grace to change you

This may be obvious. Just like it is obvious that cigarettes or a steady diet of french fries will kill you. But a whole bunch of people ignore the obvious.

If we lack something, we must ask. The sin with which we struggle is not “curable” through mere moral effort. Our sin is so deeply rooted in our personality, our background, our upbringing, our context, that to simply decide to ‘stop’ it does not ordinarily lie within our reach.

The law cannot give us the power to make right choices, it cannot shield us from wrong choices. It simply reveals our sin, amplifies our sense of need, and, if we are not careful, feeds our pride.

I don’t have a struggle with internet pornography. Some of my closest and dearest friends do. We all know that it is wrong, that it is in its most obvious way a violation of the 7th commandment. The law is clear here. But the law does not help my friends change. What attention to the law can do is make those of us who do not struggle with that sin feel pride and cause us to look down upon those who do. We can be led to think that we do not sin in that way because of some superior quality in ourselves. In reality, God has just in his grace spared me this struggle.

My struggles lie elsewhere. I don’t know what to do about my anxiety. I am a worrier. In times past, the anxiety has been so great that I would physically shake. There is no law that can help me at this point. I can’t simply say, “This is wrong – I must stop.” The law is powerless at my point of weakness. I can’t stop. I hear Jesus say, “Do not worry” and Paul say “Be anxious for nothing” and I long to be there, but my flesh is powerless. What can I do?

In the immediacy of the situation, I must cry out to God, “Father, take the anxious thoughts away!” We must not underestimate the importance of this.

We must not, but many of us do. In our church we allow people to share prayer requests during our worship on Sunday morning and in our small groups. What is rare is to have people ask that others would ask God to deliver them from their pride or anxiety or doubt or anger or greed or selfish ambition.

That makes me wonder to what degree the content of our private prayers neglects such requests.

Seek the work of God’s grace to change you. This is not all we can do. But we ought not to think that there will be much progress without it.

And while you are at it, lay off the fries and the cigarettes.

BTW, I encourage you to reflect on what this means for how we might be used to change others. If we see weakness and sin in another, should we tell them their sin or pray for them? And if both, in what proportion?