Change

This is a word that is tossed around a lot with different meanings.  Some would say it means to do something different.  

I remember when our current president was running for office all he seemed to talk about was change, keeping it very secretive about what that change would be and how it would affect our nation.  About three and a half years later many of us don’t like the change that he had in mind.  It really isn’t change at all, it has been tried before and proven to be a failure, like so many other things we call change that ultimately come down to plain conformity.

Over the years I have seen many pastors come and go, promising change, some having very high expectations, but in the end moving on with very little difference than when they started, leaving young people and adults devastated, and instilling in people distrust and disillusionment.  I have seen the entertainment come in the church and escalate and heard the watered down sermons telling people what they wanted to hear instead of what they needed to hear, but I have also seen some good positive things take place.

I remember years ago when the blue laws were in effect, when there was hardly anything open on Sunday’s, it was like the church, and even the non-churched, honored what we called the Sabbath, as a day of rest.  But as things went on people seemed to get greedy so stores and businesses started opening on Sunday until eventually it was business as usual and the churched and the non-churched just conformed to what everyone else was doing.  I guess it was in the name of change.  I guess not everything we call change is good, or is it really change at all, it is just doing the same old thing with a different spin on it.  The Bible says, “Unless the Lord build the house we labor in vain that build it.”  

I remember years ago when I committed my life to the Lord and started to go to church, there was nothing much to do and I remember being bored saying to my wife, “is this all you can do on Sunday’s.”  After all I came out of a party lifestyle doing my own thing when I felt like it, then all of a sudden there was hardly nothing to do because I didn’t want to do what there was to do, because of my own convictions.  So I prayed about it and the Lord showed me how to be content after church, go home and take a nap, and so I did and that worked out just fine.  

Then I found this in Isaiah 58:13-14, “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.  The mouth of the Lord has spoken,” which confirmed what I was doing and the Lord has blessed me and my family multitudes of times since, and He still does, praise God!  I feel that a lot of the blessings came because we were willing to honor the Sabbath, which is God’s commandment to His people.  

God rested on the seventh day of creation, which is called the Sabbath, and we should too, but too many times we are taught just to do our own thing.  The Sabbath should be honored, it should unify the family and set priorities for them plus it is good for your health.  It will refresh us spiritually and physically and the most important thing it does is, it honors the Lord.  But many people may think what we do is legalism, maybe because they aren’t willing to honor the Sabbath by not going their own way or doing their own thing and that is between them and the Lord, who we will stand before someday and give an account to.

I hope that any change that takes place is a positive one, straight from the Lord, with His anointing on it, because anything else will just be spinning our wheels.  As for me, give me that old time religion, it worked then and it will still work, it was good enough for me and multitudes like me, but what do I know I am just an old man.  This is something to think, study, and pray about.  Hey, have a great day and may God bless!!