Transformed

 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

God wants all of you, all the time, sitting, walking, waking, resting. “With all your might” is the Hebrew expression for totality. Not 75% or 95% but 100%. It’s easy to keep back an area of our life and try to hide it in darkness, but God wants our whole self in the light of his grace. He commands it, it’s possible, and we have his help.

To illustrate, let’s look at the wholeness wheel. Divide a circle into eight pie shape slivers. Each one represents a part of your life: the spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, vocational, financial, social, and recreational. Now color in each pie shape from the center towards the outer edge in proportion to how much of that area you estimate belongs to God. Do that for each pie shape area. Your circle will look like some spokes coming from the center point for each pie shape. How do your wheel’s edges look? Are all the areas colored in close to the outside edge or some just barely colored in? Now if this circle tried to roll like a wheel, how smooth would its movement be? If your life feels bumpy and turbulent, less than whole, perhaps there are too many big differences in the areas on your wholeness wheel. If every area is totally given to God the wholeness wheel will roll as God intended. What areas are you strong in and what ones need strengthening?

Jesus said that loving God with all ourselves is the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-39). “With all your might” is the language of devotion not just outward obedience to the law but heartfelt love and response by your whole being toward God. Wholeness is being single-minded. These verses summarize the first four of the 10 commandments about worshiping God alone. Is your life worshiping God alone? Are you allowing God’s transformation in 100% of all the areas of your life? Join us at South Fellowship for the eight week sermon series on how to give God all your life.

The world is anxiously waiting to see what Jesus Christ can do in, by, for, and through one man wholly given to him – God-led. You can be that man. Rev. Dr. Frank Buchman (Protestant evangelist decorated by the French and German governments for his contributions to their reconciliation after World War ll).

By Donna Burns

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” II Corinthians 5:17-21 NIV

Reconciliation and redemption are terms used by Paul to describe how we are being made new in Christ every day when we cooperate with his plan for our salvation and renewing and restoring of our lives. Sometimes this can be hard to understand. Jesus often used parables and stories to illustrate spiritual concepts. I believe the story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz is another beautiful picture of redemption and reconciliation.

Naomi had a husband, two sons and two daughters-in-law in the beginning of the book of Ruth. Then all the men die, and Orpah returns to her own Moabite family. Naomi decides to return to Israel and Ruth, also a Moabitess, will not leave her alone, but insists on returning to Naomi’s home with her. Naomi is grieving and bitter, and sees no future for herself, or her daughter-in-law. Ruth does not abandon her, and seeks to provide for them both by gleaning grain for them to eat in the fields of Boaz. Ruth comes to Boaz seeking his protection by marriage, and provision for Naomi as well. Boaz agrees to be their kinsman-redeemer, marries Ruth, and they have a son named Obed, who was the father of David. In the beginning of Ruth’s story, Naomi saw her life as empty. By the end of the book of Ruth, her life was full, and she could look forward to a full future.

Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer. He offered himself as a willing sacrifice for our sins. He died on the cross to pay the price required for our sin, so that we can be reconciled to God. When we accept this free gift from God, to let Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins wash us clean of our sin, then we can come into the presence of God. We can spend time getting to know God, and we can learn how God wants us to live. Our lives are being made new every day. When we read the Bible, the Holy Spirit will reveal to us new insights into our lives, into God’s truth, and he will reveal ways we can show God’s love and his desire to reconcile others to himself. We have a future and a hope, just as Ruth and Naomi did. This week, read and memorize II Corinthians 5:17, remember in Christ we are being made new!

By Grace Hunter

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

I believe I’ve mentioned how my dad was a farmer, on and off, most of his life. I can always remember him talking about alfalfa, and all the cuttings they’d get when he was a boy. He always stressed how important it was for alfalfa to be cut and dried in the field. When I asked him about it, he said some of the cows would bloat terribly if it wasn’t fully dried. If the cow was too bloated and it couldn’t be reduced, they had what looked like a nail with a metal tube that they’d stab into the cow and relieve their bloating. All this because of some sort of chemical that needed to evaporate out of the plant before they could eat it. The drying out transformation was the best method for using alfalfa as feed.

The alfalfa needed transformation from a lush, flowered plant to a dried bland-looking plant. Its potential toxicity became nourishing for what ate it. While ‘drying out’ isn’t the transformation we’re looking for in the Lord, it provides a wonderful example of how we are transformed from what we were to being like Jesus, something honoring and glorifying to him. This transformation can allow us to ‘nourish’ our fellow Jesus followers, helping them to flourish.

Over the last 15 years or so, I can think of several areas in my life where transformation has happened. The thoughts that I pause on, my reaction to adversity, how I look at and think about others are but a few. I’m certain, if you pause for just a moment, transformations you’ve experienced will come to mind. When they do, jot them down, and thank God for that transformative action and praise him for it!

By Rich Obrecht