Metamorphosis: A beautiful word

Metamorphosis. I love that word.  It just sounds impressive, doesn’t it?  It even looks great!  It drips with an air of mystery.   Its a word we associate with ancient tales of wizards changing themselves into dragons, princes into frogs, and children into mythical creatures.  

If you love science too! Metamorphosis is the word that is used to describe the change that takes place in caterpillars in order to become butterflies.  From a creeping, almost worm like creature will come a more typically insect sort of creature, with fewer legs, featuring a set of wings that can often dazzle in their appearance.

The word in the greek carries the idea of change.  But not just any change.  A change for the better.  A metamorphosis means that there is going to be something newer, but also more wondrous, more amazing, than what it replaces.  

Today we talked in church about the metamorphosis that God calls us to when we submit our minds to Him.  When we trust Him for salvation, we have a new nature.  We are regenerated, and His Spirit comes to live within us.  But the change is not complete there.  In fact, it has only begun. 

When we trust Jesus to save us, we are His, and we become His Saints.  But we still think like sinners.  Our starting assumptions and prejudices, our fundamental view of reality really is still the same.  The change has started.  One starting point we had that changed from before we got saved is that now we believe there is a God!  Maybe that was a starting assumption we had before we heard about Christ.  Or maybe we believed that we had to earn our own salvation.  That changed when you realized you needed Jesus and His payment on the cross to buy your way into heaven.

But other assumptions remain the same.  There are lots of things that this world teaches you that really, you still probably believe just as you did before.  And until you are challenged in those ideas, you will continue to hold them and base your life on them.  

The world has you for a lot of time each day.  There is no way a one hour worship service can fully combat the 168 hours of input that your world has upon you.  You might object at this point.  “Hey, Pastor! I sleep for a lot of that time!”   This is true.  But remember, even while you sleep, your mind is not silent.  Through dreams it actually continues to reinforce the messages that your world gives you through out the day.  We need to increase the amount of time we give to God so that His word and His truth can work its way into our minds and saturate us so that we can have our minds “metamorphosed” into something new and better.

I confess that I still struggle with ideas and thoughts which may surprise you.  No less a personage than Charles Spurgeon confessed to struggling with the same things when he preached this to his church one Sunday:

"I hope that my will is managed by divine grace.  But I am afraid my imagination is not at times.  Those who have a fair share of imagination know what a difficult thing it is to control.  You cannot restrain it.  My imagination has taken me down to the vilest kennels and sewers of earth.  It has given me thoughts so dreadful that, while I could not avoid them, yet I was thoroughly horrified by them.  These thoughts will come; and when I feel in the holiest frame, the most devoted to God, and the most earnest in prayer, it often happens that that is the very time when the plague breaks out the worst."

If Charles Spurgeon can struggle with this stuff, then we ought not to be surprised that, in a day when we are bombarded with messages contrary to the gospel, that we should also struggle with keeping bad ideas and thoughts from finding safe harbor in our minds.

Praise God at this point for Hebrews 4:16.  Even as we make war against evil thoughts and mental habits of the mind God gives us grace and mercy.  He knows we are but dust.  Draw near to God daily when you are finding your thoughts going to places they ought not, and you will do well.