When I dont care to change

I’m currently enjoying time in a study group for pastors and we’re reading through the book “How People Change” by Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp.  The authors of the book make a great statement: “We are new creatures in Christ even in a world full of heat! But we all know that it is easy to forget the wonderful things that are ours as children of God.” That gets to the heart of why we often fail to change.  We are who God makes us, yet we forget what that means. It’s as if we’re the very loved, adopted children of the kindest, richest, and most powerful man around… yet we choose to (figuratively) sleep on the street and eat stale bread rather than accept the good gifts that our father offers. We lack in character because we dont realize who we are and that we have the Creator of the world working to change us.
We already have a new heart, and are being restored by the Spirit, but we dont seem to care.

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis)

It is good to want all that ours in Christ. This isn’t selfishness or pride, its actually realizing who we are called to be. It is good to be discontent with who we are when we do not reflect Christ, provided that is followed with a personal response and appeal to him and the power of the Holy Spirit to enact further change in us.
“Remember all of the hope and promise of the gospel belongs to you. In Christ you have been made new…he works in every situation to finish the transformation he has begun in our hearts” (How People Change, pg 127)