In one of his sermons on this scripture, Howard Olds preached: “Lee Strobel spent the first part of his life as an atheist, an angry man. Today, he is an author and pastor of a local congregation. In his own writings he tells this story. ‘For years I would come home cursing and angry about things at work. One day, I came home so mad that I kicked a hole in the living room wall. I can only imagine what my five-year-old must have been feeling and thinking in those days at home. Then I became a Christian. I knew a real transformation had taken place in my life when five months after my conversion, Allison came to her mother and said, ‘Mommy, I want God to do for me what He did for Daddy some time ago.’”
At our main entrance to Brentwood UMC, we have the “hands statue.” When I see it, I think of the song, Have Thine Own Way, especially the line, “mold me and make me after thy will.”
When feeling weak, insecure, and in need of protection, I think of the hands of God holding me. When feeling out-of-sorts and un-Christ-like, I think of God’s hands remolding my life, smoothing out the rough edges. When I think of all my imperfections, I think of God’s hands trying to transform a resistant me into God’s new creation.
I want God’s hands to transform me such that someone will say, like Lee Strobel’s daughter, “I want God to do for me what God did for him.”
QUESTIONS FOR THE FIELD
What characteristics of your life need improving/changing? What would your family say? Your colleagues? Your friends? You enemies?
How might you be different if you allowed Christ to change you?
What is preventing you from allowing Christ to guide those changes?
FAMILY FIELD TALK
Let each family member share one way they wish they could be more like Jesus?
Pray and support each other, helping your family members let Christ transform you.
PRAYER GUIDE
Dear loving God, I know you love all of us, including me. I know you want me to become an even better creation, but only you can change me. Please help me allow you to mold me and make me after your will, which I know is best for me in the long run. Please help me be a new creation, so others will want you to do the same in them. In your gracious name, I ask. Amen.
