The word change has suffered from legalizing damage as well as rumor-mill impairment. Would it not be impossible to repent without change? Could growth take place without change?
Sharon Hersh makes a very stark statement, This is the mystery of redeeming love. It allows no one to remain unchanged.
Every kind, sort, and label of people are called to make major changes in our lives....constantly. If there is a chameleon sin among us it is the one that starts us in a religious rut and keeps us in a rut while shaking our fists at the core essence of the kingdom; that of change.
One cannot read scriptures with a student's heart and fail to learn again from such a reading--drastic and sometimes radical--for sweeping need of being new again. The Word references such occasion as day by day.
Well, we don't need change for changes' sake, quips the rutted. Right. And when have we really been in such a context?
Rather, I hear of such great need for church growth and individual maturity. This is a constant. Congregational methodology is surely suspect when controlled by stiff rutism. The body has suffered paralysis for years because we have refused--by argument and threat--to make adjustment both to the Word of God and the culture we are trying to reach.
The good news is that it seems the body of Christ is gaining momentum; especially in places where we assume we need to change before we ask those we are trying to reach to do the same.
New life. New hope. New understanding. All of this is found in the kingdom of God....day by day. A huge problem arises when we try to do church without anticipating change in, for, and with everyone. New hope is ushered into every congregation when we hurry to grow in Him.
A mark of the true church is not imprisonment by religious habit; but rather freedom by the mentoring Christ.
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