2 Chronicles 24:1-25:28; Romans 12:1-12; Psalm 22:19-31; Proverbs 20:8-10
“But after Jehoiada’s death, the leaders of Judah came and bowed before King Joash and persuaded him to listen to their advice. They decided to abandon the Temple of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and they worshiped Asherah poles and idols instead! Because of this sin, divine anger fell on Judah and Jerusalem.”
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
“The poor will eat and be satisfied. All who seek the Lord will praise him. Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy.”
“Who can say, ‘I have cleansed my heart; I am pure and free from sin’?”
Transformation takes place in a lot of different ways at a lot of different times. We go from child to teen to young adult. We get married, go to work, or both. We become parents or begin taking care of our own parents. We have kids, or ulcers, or some of each, perhaps even one because of the other. We get sick, and we die. Each part of life is a transforming process. None of it leaves us unaffected or unchanged. We need to be careful, though, of how life would change us, and of the creatures into which we allow ourselves to be transformed. We are never left without a choice as to how life’s circumstances affect us. The problem arises when, in the middle of a transforming event, we forget to exercise our choice. When we do not actively work with the Spirit to help assure an outcome and transformation pleasing to our Savior, we allow circumstances more control over our lives than Christ, which is a very bad place to be.
This is exactly what happened to Joash. He began as a King who did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight. He was surrounded by good, supportive people, none a better friend than Jehoiada, his priest and mentor. But then Jehoiada died, and a transformation took place in Joash which turned him from disciple to heathen and murderer overnight. It would be no stretch to speculate that the death of Jehoiada so grieved Joash that he came to feel he could no longer trust God. In any event, no longer was God first in Joash’s life. Joash thus was seduced by those who advised abandonment of the Temple in favor of idol worship. In short, Joash did not effectively manage the transformation of grief and so became vulnerable to bad advice and worse temptations.
Years ago, I had a dear friend who lost a baby in childbirth. Previously a very spiritual man, this loss flummoxed him. He and his wife wrestled their despair for over a decade but never were able to reconcile their child’s death with the idea of a loving God. Their grief transformed them both into much more fragile, brittle and superficial individuals. Eventually, each became dissatisfied with the other’s ability to meet their needs, undoubtedly in large measure because neither could assuage the other’s sorrow. Both allowed misery to fester until it completely eroded their marriage. Adultery was the predictable result, and finally divorce. This sad – and completely understandable – story makes a critical point. Grief, stress and anxiety can all transform our personalities and desires as effectively as faith, love and mercy. It falls to us to decide how we will be transformed, and by what.
Change is inevitable. We grow or we die. How we do so has a lot more to do with the way we allow ourselves to be transformed than we may think. My friends did not choose to be changed as they were, to have their marriage and, to a large extent, their lives destroyed by the unspeakable tragedy of their lost child. But then, Satan rarely asks permission to take over our lives. He does not have to. He simply has to wait until we tire of seeking the Holy Spirit’s power and will for our lives and start trying to gut things out on our own. We weaken; Beelzebub cuts us from the herd of Christian fellowship; and we become victims of his nefarious plots to destroy us. It is that simple, and that deadly.
Paul doubtless also experienced the temptation to give up on Christ, to give in to the transformation of the Evil One. Persecuted, stoned, afflicted without relief, and rejected by those he most yearned to share the Gospel with, Paul could have become bitter and vengeful. We know he had it in him; he had Saul in Him. But Saul had been completely transformed by the work of Christ, and Paul had no intention of going back to that life. His salvation, therefore, was not a one-time thing. It was, in part, learned behavior. In the midst of every crisis, Paul was always quick to remind himself that the love and grace of Christ had saved him numerous times before and would continue to save him from the demons of personality he most rightly feared. Paul claimed his very body as the holy ground of God Almighty, the very dwelling place of the Living Christ. Together, he and Jesus made sure there was just no room left for Satan or Saul in Paul’s soul.
If we take Paul’s admonition seriously that our bodies literally are Temples of the Holy Spirit, it makes it a lot more difficult to give ourselves over to Satan and his influences. We can never be empty if we are filled with and by God. May we never forget that, for those who know Christ as Savior, this fullness is now our natural state of being. We are never alone, and never without HIS power to say no to the grief, stress and anxiety life throws at us, as long as we stay busy claiming the strength of our Lord. Only He can clean our hearts. Only He can keep our souls pure and free from sin. Only we can be certain He has the opportunity.
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