Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome to God’s living room,

I was talking with a friend this past week on skype this past and he could tell that there was something different about me since the last time he saw me. He said he could see it in my face. Well what has changed over the last couple of months is that I have lost 15 pounds and still have about another 5 to 10 to go. Most of us have something about ourselves that we would like to change. Maybe it is our physical appearance. Maybe it is an addiction to something like gambling, drugs or pornography. Maybe it is financial situation that we would like to have an extreme makeover. Maybe we have so much anxiety going on in our life. We think about all the bad things that could happen and we are on the edge. Most of us have at least one thing that we would like to change but most of us never will. Why? Because we have come to believe a cultural assumption that says, “I can never change. I am who I am. I am what I am.” And you know why we have come to believe this myth that I can never change? Because we have tried! We have tried and failed. In fact we have tried and tried again and failed. New Year’s came around and we vowed to change and we did, for a couple of weeks and now we are back to our old self. Do you know that the whole concept of “I can never change” stands in radical opposition to what the Bible says. A big part of Christianity is Life Change, not just for an eternity but also for now.

Let’s take a peak into 1 Cor 6 so I can show you what I am talking about: 9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. That is a radical transformation! And I know maybe some of you are saying, “I see that in the Bible but I don’t see it in my life. I’m stuck in the same negative behavior.” Here is what we need to do: We need to start changing our thinking to change our action. We need to change the way we think. There was an even an article about this in the Milwaukee JS within the last couple of weeks. It talked about white kids not being able to play basketball as well as black kids because they think they can’t. And it talked about black kids not being able to do math as well as white kids because they think they can’t. So I will ask us all: Do I need to change my thinking?