Teaching Notes

Embracing the Change – Part 2

People face many things in life, some good and some bad. How we face those challenges determines if we want to be better or if we simply want to fit in to the world around us. When people change to be more like others around them, this is called conforming. The change that took place in Ashley Pearson (a young girl that God spared in a car accident) was a transformation. She began to allow God to transform her life into what he wanted her life to be. She did not become bitter because of her difficulty, in fact she allowed God to use it to help her worship him. What does it mean to be transformed? (It means to be altered, for the better in this instance, from the state something was once in.) We were once lost and sinners. When Christ changed us he not only gave us the righteousness of God but he transformed our lives. He changed us from a sinner to a child of God.

John 1:12 – Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

God gives us the power to be transformed, but there are things that we allow to get in the way that keep us from allowing ourselves to be changed. What do you think gets in the way of us being changed? The greatest thing that gets in the way is our thinking. We have to move from what I call “stinking thinking” to “holy thinking.” What we think is very important to how we live out our values and our faith. If we allow the world’s views or our view of the world to direct us, we will have faulty thinking.

Let’s look at the belief test. What do you think about these questions and the results?

Do you believe that the devil or Satan is not real but a symbol of evil? 41 percent of teenagers who seemed to be Christians believed this lie.

Do you believe that all religious faiths teach equally valid truth? 45 percent wrongly believed this.

Do you believe that Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and all other people pray to the same god, even though they use different names for god? 52 percent wrongly believed this.

Do you believe if people are generally good, or do enough good things for others during his or her life, they will earn a place in heaven? 52 percent wrongly believed this.

Do you believe when Christ was on earth he committed sins, like other people? 58 percent wrongly believed this.

What makes these beliefs wrong? Not because I said so, but because they are contrary to the word of God. If we are to be changed we have to feed our spiritual man on the truth of God’s word.

What are you eating?

What if I invited you to come to church with me and then told we would be eating lunch out of the garbage can? Why would you not want to eat from the garbage can?

These are some responses the young people gave:

Bad for you

Make you sick

I'd tell you to eat it first

I wouldn’t want to come to a church that makes you eat out of the garbage can.

Eating spiritual food that is not good for you is the same as eating from the garbage can. It does not help you grow spiritually, it will make you sick because you will not be able to resist sin and it does not help you to become stronger. Also, if you would tell the person to eat from the garbage can first, then why don’t you tell your friends that try to tempt you with sin to eat it themselves? Or when you go to church why do you get angry if the church talks to you about living right (which is only done by “eating” right things). You said you would not want to go to a church that fed you garbage, so then accept the good food they church gives you to grow. The way to embrace the transformation, the change is to begin to change the way you think. This is done by changing what we fed ourselves on.

(come back next week as we discuss some of the good and the bad spiritual food we eat)