BULLFROGS AND BUTTERFLIES

I remember as if it were yesterday. Rebecca sitting in her car seat in the back of our Toyota Celica singing,”bullfrogs and butterflies, they both been born again”. Singing with her and watching her joy as we all sang God’s truth are memories that I will always cherish. So many lessons from the Bible are taught through children’s songs, both to youth and adults alike.

Romans 12:1-2 says,”I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

The word “transformed” in verse two is from the Greek word metamorphoo. It is the word from which we get “metamorphosis”. A little caterpillar spins a cocoon and transforms into a beautiful butterfly. A tiny tadpole swims around, grows a tail, then jumps out as a frog. Do you want this kind of change in your life? No, we can’t have the physical change like these examples but we can change by renewing our minds.

The key to having a close, personal, love relationship with Christ is renewing your mind. When you accepted Christ as your Savior and Lord, your spirit changed immediately but your natural mind did not. Your mind needs to be taught. Your mind needs to be feed. Your mind needs to be renewed. How? By the Word of God. You can no longer say, “I am just an old sinner saved by grace-just a few more weary days and then I’ll fly away.” You are now a saint. You have been sanctified, set apart, for God. We must get out of this mindset of poor old pitiful me and realize who we are in Christ. Your old nature has passed away and you are a new creation in Christ.

I hear and see so many people struggling in their Christian life. Many are tossed and turned by the waves surrounding them. They wander around without direction. Friend, God has a wonderful plan for your life. He wants to bless you, not harm you. Get into the Word. Seek God. He promises that those who seek Him will find Him. Let your mind be washed and renewed by reading and believing of His Word to you.

 

Prayer is Spiritual Exercise.

You know when your getting ready to play a sport, or the big game or just do a little exercise. You start running and jumping and about 15 min. in to it your thinking “Why do I like this, I feel terrible”. But you stick with it and finish your warm ups or get a little ways down the road and your finally loose, you feel good you hit that proverbial second wind and you are good to go the rest of the game.

Well, I have found prayer is a lot like exercise, its spiritual exercise. We start out praying because we know we should and its not long till your thinking “why do I do this, I think I have said every thing I have to say.” This is where most of us stop. We rarely take time to actually listen to God or even just think about praying.

See most of us can pray for 30 seconds. no problem. Most of us are good even for a couple of minutes. A few of you are even comfortable at the 5-10 minute mark. But almost everyone hits that wall at about 10 minutes. We don’t know what else to pray for, we have fallen into the generic prayers.

However, I encourage you don’t be defeated by the wall. Press on. You might have to re-pray for things or start making lists of people your praying for but keep going. You will get through and find yourself speaking to God (and hopefully listening) much longer and more intently then you would have ever thought.

Let me challenge you. Don’t just pray at the end of the day, on the way to work, in the shower, or when you wake up. Those are great times. But set aside and plan on praying for 30 – 60 minutes. You will notice a great difference after doing this for even just a week.

 

Prepared to Thrive Not Just Rescued.

Imagine if you will with me, for a moment, that you are stranded on a desert island. What do you do first? Maybe food, water, shelter, the big three. Once you are alive, then you turn your attention to rescue a fire or message on the sand. But time goes by………… Have you seen Cast Away? How long do you keep up just surviving. Do you live with the bare minimum or do you build a nice hut and start preparing for better food?

In life we to often live like we are stranded on a desert island. I think there are few of us that would say we would give up the hope of being rescued and focus on making the best life on the island we can. Yet so many of us make it through life on just the bare minimum. It might be in our family, education, finances, marriage, or work but we don’t try to thrive we just get by, just make it through the next week, the next set of bills, the next school year. Did God design us to just get by?

Romans 8:35 &37 says “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

I don’t think it would be very loving of God to desire us to just get by yet many of us live in that life, we don’t strive for the best, we don’t seek to succeed, we just get by. This is most devastating and prevalent within our spiritual life.  We aren’t growing we aren’t learning, we aren’t studying, we just come to church and pray a little, and read a little, but we never break through much of any thing. But just like when you pay the minimum payments on your bills then you add more debt each week (the practice that got you there to begin with) you never get out, and the just getting by just makes it worse. The same thing in our spiritual lives we live the same lives that put us in need of a change and we don’t change anything, we just tinker around the edges.

So my challenges is stop tinkering around the edges of your life. Stop just getting by. Stop just living to get by. Get prepared to thrive not just be rescued.