Transforming Lives: Embracing God's Grand Narrative

In contrast to what I was reading back here, and again not that they were perfect. But the contrast was so great, so deep that I wept over the state of the body of Christ that we had lost the vision. We’d lost the perspective. We’d lost the understanding. We’d lost that grandness of the truth of God in all aspects of life. [00:05:35]

And therefore, we had shrunk Christianity down to a small slice of life. And because we had shrunk it down to that small slice of life, we acted as if God were irrelevant in the other 350 degrees of life. And we were no longer salt. We were no longer light. We didn’t look any different than the rest of the world around us. [00:06:00]

And so Romans 12:2 became a key passage for me. God as He was moving Paul to write, “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed,” be “metamorphed.” The Greek is not just a… you know the word transformed is so overused today. I saw not long ago about… they were talking about a guy who had been transformed by changing the grip on his golf swing. [00:06:39]

But the Scripture uses that Greek word, metamorpho in a very judicious way. It’s used in the gospels when we hear about Jesus being, and we translate it transfigured. Do you recall? Metamorpho. It’s used in the Romans 12 passage that I just quoted, and it’s used in 2 Corinthians 3, where it says that we with unveiled faces are all being “metamorphed” – metamorpho – transformed into the likeness of Christ. [00:07:18]

This is not a minor word. This is a deep meaning word. This is not just getting a new pair of shoes. This is not a new do. We’re not talking about a little dab here and there. We’re talking about a deep transformation. It’s a metamorpho. That’s where we get the word metamorphosis, and that’s what we describe what happens when the little wiggly thing. [00:08:01]

Have you ever thought about what has to happen to that caterpillar? Now that’s a radical transformation that occurs. It is the metamorphous that occurs. And so I was overwhelmed by this deep remorse and sorrow that the bride of Christ was no longer acting the way God had intended us to act, and therefore it was not a surprise when we looked around the culture, that we were not having the impact upon the culture around us as Christ had intended. [00:08:32]

And so I have… from that moment I have been called with that deep passion to see the people of God healthy and strong again. And that is what’s going to drive my remarks to you tonight. So I’m a teacher. I’m not a speaker. I usually do not accept speaking engagements. I would rather go and spend a weekend at a men’s retreat. [00:09:20]

I’m not as comfortable up here. I would rather be… If there were stairs here, I’d rather be down. I’d rather be interacting. I always had thought if God called me to be a preacher, I’d probably freak everybody out because I want to interact. I love to do that. I love college students. That’s where I spend a lot of my time. I hang with them, and I love to interact with them deeply. [00:09:45]

So I’m interested in what is going to happen here in terms of you thinking and to consciously keep yourself from falling into the mode that is so easy for us in our culture to do, and that is to fall into a passive mode. My friends, when we hear the Word of God preached, when we hear the Word of God taught, we should never be in a passive mode. [00:10:32]

We should always be in that mode of wanting God to reveal Himself to us in the truth that He has so graciously given to us, that He might do something within us. I’m fascinated and have tried to look over and over again at those moments that the Scripture gives to us in describing what happens when the frail human being comes into the presence of God. [00:10:57]

My favorite is Isaiah 6. I won’t go back there with you, but remember when Isaiah comes into the presence of God and he says, “Woe is me. I am undone, for I’m a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” God exposes us. When we come into His presence, He exposes us. And it’s not some… it’s not some mystical thing. [00:11:28]

We’re going to talk about that tonight that, you know, the truth of God is not just some mystical kind of a thing. It is the reality of who God is. And somehow in the presence of God, it’s like the reality of who He is exposes us. And I am so glad God is so gracious that He doesn’t expose everything about us when we come into His presence. Otherwise, we’d be crispy critters. [00:12:00]