It’s common to lust for change at the beginning of a new year. Wanderlust creeps in. Wasted time in the year behind us might haunt our hearts. Discontentment with our body, our goals, our circumstances draws our gaze over the fence to admire the verdant hues of other pastures.
As a Christian, you need to have a clear understanding of both the sort of change God desires for you, and His means of bringing that change about. After all, change is easy. Just clip your toe-nails, that’s a change. But God desires for you a deeper and more all-encompassing change than mere adjustments to your place, appearance, or circumstance.
So first, what sort of change does God desire for you? He desires that you would, more and more, bear the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ. He wants you to have the family resemblance. He wants you to be like He is. He wants you hate your sin, and delight in His word more than great treasure. He wants to dissipate your worries, by drawing you into the placid glory of His divine nature. He wants you to cast all your burdens on Him in prayer. These are the sorts of changes that God desires for you.
Secondly, what are His means of bringing about this change? He changes you, not by committing you to a rehab center of moral reform, but by surrounding you with the greenhouse of His Word and sacraments. The seed of His living Word has been planted in you. You grow, and change, in accordance with who you are in and by Christ. By these means, His Spirit causes you to grow like the cedars of Lebanon.
We want half-hearted change. God offers you fundamental transformation. Come to His Word, His water, His Wine; turn your heart to delight in it, and so be entirely renewed.
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