Don’t Be Afraid To Change Your Way Of Thinking

9 Oct

“We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.”  ~ Bill Vaughan

How do you know what you are doing is right?  Just because you have become proficient at it does not mean that it is the best or right thing to do.  I often think about this in regard to the story of Saul.  Now there was a real character.

Saul was a faithful Jew.  He was a wonderful prayer champion.  He was a stalwart leader in the faith.  He also was convinced, absolutely convinced, that Christianity was an aberration, an abomination, and he wanted to do everything in his power to crush “The Way”.  He went so far as to receive letters from the authorities that gave him absolute power over Christians.  With those letters in hand, he began a campaign of terror against the Christian community.  He had them arrested and killed, all because he was convinced they were a threat to others.

On the road to Damascus, he encountered the Lord.  Never in a million years would he have predicted that would have happened.  Never in a million years would he have considered that he might have been wrong.  Yet, there on the road, he found out that Jesus was real and that Jesus was calling him to serve the Christian community, indeed, to grow the Church.

Now, if Saul were the person he was simply because he was a rigid, curmudgeonly man, he would not have changed.  He would have remained the same hateful enemy of the Christian faith.  Saul was not that rigid, curmudgeonly man, though.  He was a man of faith.  It was his faith that took him on a crusade against Christianity and it was his faith in God that allowed him to see that Jesus was real and was calling him.

He learned that all he ever thought about the early Church was wrong.  He learned that they were not the enemy.  He learned that Jesus was a real person, that he had died on the cross and rose again just as the Christian community had said.  His faith made him ready to respond to the invitation of Jesus.

We might be doing things in our faith and we might be doing them well.  However, they might also not be the right thing for us.  Maybe we are doing them more for the sake of our own glory rather than to serve the Lord.  Maybe we are doing them because they are easy and we do not want to do something more difficult.  Maybe we are doing the “safe” thing rather than risking everything.  We will never know if we do not entertain the possibility that change might be necessary.

Keep doing what you are doing in your faith life.  But always be open to the direction and challenge of the Lord.

FAITH ACTION:  Pray for those who are so locked in to their way of doing things that they do not even realize that they are wrong.