Top Ten Truths(?) About Just The Word:
#10. Life changing. Do you know how hard it is to really transform a life? Especially in the brief amount of time most people want/need it to happen? The cold, honest, sobering fact is that real life change demands a ton of work by the life owner, the hearer, the audience, not the preacher/teacher/guru. So the unvarnished truth? Just the Word is probably just life-sustaining/life-maintaining. At best, life-challenging. It CAN be life changing. It all depends on how hard and long we want to work.
The only way for me to ensure that things will change in my life is for me to make a decision. Until I do, nothing will change. Nothing in my life will have any chance to change.
Making a decision means cutting something away. It starts the domino effect that eventuates in visible change in our lives. The decision doesn’t have to be a physical, visible decision. A decision in the heart–an inner man, conviction based commitment to cutting something out will lead to visible change; because everything visible begins with something invisible. According to scripture everything that we can see comes from things that do not appear (Heb 11:3). The moment we make a decision, a real, heartfelt decision, everything changes!
Real life change doesn’t start with God’s decision to bless us. It doesn’t start with some gatekeeper’s decision to let us in. It doesn’t start with our luck turning, or the universe aligning with us, or the gods smiling on us. It doesn’t start with the ouster of the haters from our lives, or the breaking of the curse someone put on us. It starts with ME MAKING A DECISION. It starts with me embracing pain and making it work for me, because every decision involves pain!
The very word ‘decide’ comes from the Latin word decedere which means to cut away and suggest the literal lopping off of something. It calls to mind Jesus’ challenge to his audience: If your hand causes you to sin, CUT IT OFF. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell…(Mk 9:43). In other words, Jesus was saying, MAKE A DECISION! A decision for life. A decision to live no matter how steep the cost.
Hey, listen, we’re already enduring pain right now! That’s why we want our life to change! We’re in pain! So, why not PICK our pain!? Why not by faith embrace a pain that will work FOR us (2 Cor 4:17), rather than against us? Why not pick a pain that will lead to the elimination of the pain we didn’t want in the first place? MAKE A DECISION! Decide today. Decide now, and let’s initiate the life changing event we yearn for and need.
