Next week our country celebrates the fourth of July. It is our Independence Day. This is the day we celebrate our forefathers taking the initiative to fight for our country's freedom. This is the day when our country was completely transformed. We went from 13 colonies that submitted to the royal crown to 13 independent states that were transformed to start a new journey of freedom and independence.
Living in Massachusetts, I have gained a greater appreciation of this because I live in one of the birthplaces of independence. It makes me stop and reflect on the country as we know it today and the church's place in that free country. We still enjoy our freedoms; sometimes I think we enjoy them a little too much and those freedoms are taken advantage of. The church has certainly enjoyed the freedom independence has brought it over the last 230+ years. The church has played a vital role in the shaping of our country. But, as I look at the church and its place in this independent nation today, does it look transformed?
We live in a very skeptical culture. The younger generations are asking more questions about things that were supposed to be set in stone for ages. People want to see tangible evidence that something is real. Faith is hard to believe anymore. We are products of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution; therefore, we want evidence before we declare something real. This is where I think the church is failing. For too long we have taken for granted the fact that people are growing up with an inherent knowledge of the things of God, the Bible, and the Church. We have assumed for too long that people are born into a Christian home and raised according to the Bible. This is a failure because we have ceased to show the transforming power of Jesus. We have started to conform to the ways of the world. Didn't Paul warn us about this in Romans 12:2?
People today need to see transformation not conformity. They don't want to see another institution that looks just like all the others. They want to see an institution that is made up of people who have been transformed by the living God.
Most of our time is spent focusing on Sunday morning. That is what we build towards throughout the week. We do our things during the week, barely survive, and hope to get refilled Sunday morning so that we can do the same routine all over again on Monday. Is this what Jesus suffered and died on the cross for? Is this why he rose from the dead? So that we could go through the same routines, empty ourselves from stress, and go to the religious gas station on Sunday because our gas light came on Saturday night?
Paul says in II Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come." Do you hear the words of Paul screaming at us from centuries ago? We are a new creation! We have been transformed through Christ. This is what people need to see. They don't want to see a bunch of Christians dragging themselves to church on Sunday because they feel obligated to go. They want to see the transforming work of Jesus in our lives on a DAILY basis! They need to see this. They need to know that Jesus is real and is still transforming lives today. They need to know that he is not a religious relic. They need to know that he is the living God who is seated on his throne waiting for his time to return.
Our colonial ancestors won independence. People could not touch independence, but they could see independence because they saw the transformation in their new country. People cannot touch Jesus, but they can see him through his transformed followers. Let us celebrate our independence this week by showing we have been changed, the old has gone and the new has come.
