Transformative Hope: Embracing Change Through God's Grace

Change is possible. Transformation is possible. Being reformed, remolded, reshaped into a person who looks like God intended when he first thought me up, that actually is a possibility. I was with Michael Ware last evening. We all got to talk with him not too long ago on one of our videos. [00:00:28]

What is the foundational hope? There has never been any like the one expressed by Jesus and his followers in the New Testament. And Paul puts it like this, Dallas quotes this on page 77 of Renovation of the Heart: "But we all with unveiled faces, beholding is in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed." [00:01:38]

The transformation of human lives into a character, a spirit that is glorious in truth and courage and moral beauty and love and joy, and there is nobody else that stewards this hope. There is no political vision for this. There is no political legislation or party or program or leader who can stand before any nation and say. [00:02:34]

The best contribution the church can actually make to the political realm is to offer people who are being shaped that way, and whose eternal life will far outlast any political system. There is no economic system that will produce that. There is no educational curriculum that will produce that. [00:03:18]

We have lost confidence that the way of Jesus is the way to produce transformed human beings. And Dallas talks about a couple of reasons before getting into which we will do, but not today, before getting into the pattern, the framework that makes transformation possible. We have to address why do we think it can't happen. [00:04:42]

Real spiritual need and change, he writes, as we have emphasized, is on the inside, in the hidden area of life that God sees and that we cannot see even in ourselves without his help. Indeed, in the early stages of spiritual development, this is really amazing. [00:05:56]

Without the gentle but rigorous process of inner transformation initiated and sustained by the graceful presence of God in our world, the change of personality in life clearly announced and spelled out in the Bible, explained and illustrated throughout Christian history, is impossible. We don't only admit it, we insist upon it. [00:07:24]

The transformation of our inner selves is not something based on how well leaders may happen to do. It is not closed off to us because we're condemned to be never anything more than as miserable as we are right now who cannot change. And then also it's very important to understand we don't do this on our own. [00:09:25]

I was talking to a friend yesterday at lunch, and he'd been speaking with a woman, not a Christian leader, not well-known, very simple person, very quiet person, and they were talking about prayer. And she said, "I pray about everything," and he was wondering if that was kind of a cliche. [00:09:46]

The psalmist said a long time ago, "Taste and see that the Lord is good," and the way that we do that is from one moment to the next as we experience his care, which is his grace in our lives. That is experience-based confidence in God's love and care. It is possible. [00:10:24]

So today, from one moment to the next, God, make the oranges taste sweet to me. God, let me find your goodness in this moment, in this food, in that sunlight, in this person's face, in that person's word, in this thought, for we are being transformed in the fellowship of the withered hand. [00:10:50]

God make the oranges sweet. See you next time. [00:11:18]