When we get to this stage of the year I usually write sermons that have to do with inner change. I do that because this is the time of the year when the most people entertain the possibility of change. Christian and non-Christian alike are asking... what can I do to be different this year than I was last year?

There is no easy natural answer to that question. Everyone has tried the resolution thing and found that for the most part it doesn’t work. If you do manage to change some aspect of your life by an act of your will you become so arrogant and so self righteous about it that the whole is worse off than it was before.

The apostle Paul calls the whole approach an ungodly approach.

Sometimes we reach the end of a year and we have a sense of spiritual disappointment.

We have disappointed ourselves and we are sure that we have disappointed God. Even the word itself points to that:

Dis- appointment.....We have dissed God’s appointment for our lives. I am missing the life that I was appointed by God to live

After a few times of that we develop a Popeye theology. You remember Popeye? He was a simple, seafaring, pipe smoking, Olive Oyl loving, sailor man who wasn’t anything more than he was and didn’t ever expect to become any more than he was. Do you remember his favorite saying:

I yam what I yam!

You might think that he just had a strong self esteem, but he generally offered that statement as an explanation of his shortcomings. I don’t anticipate much growth or change. don’t expect too much... I’m not going to become what I yam not. In his bleakest moments he would add, I yam what I yam... and that’s all that I yam.

If you have developed a Popeye theology about spiritual growth you are doomed to come to the beginning of each new year dis-appointed that God has once again failed to do what he was supposed to have done in your life. That kind of mentality flies directly in the face of what the Bible is all about. If it’s true that some people are just not going to be able to change spiritually, that would make the Bible some kind of a bad joke.

God whole plan for every single one of us is that he will use every year of our lives, every day of our lives, every hour of our lives to overcome the defacing of his image that sin brought into our lives. He didn’t say I’m going to fix some of what is broken.... He said, I’m going to make you a new creation in Christ Jesus!

And it doesn’t matter what your age is or how long a time you’ve been a Christian or how short a time you’ve been a Christian.

When God came to Moses he thought God had really messed up on his timing. He was eighty years old. If only God had come knocking 40 years before, when he was young and strong and was freshly out of the best education that Egypt could provide. Forty years ago he had powerful connections and high hopes. When God approached him at age 80 he had negative words to say...

Who am I that I should go to the Pharaoh?? Nobody knows me, I am slow of speech and slow of tongue, I am disappointed in myself, I Yam what I yam.

And God’s response was, if I might paraphrase, You are what you are, but that is not all you are or all you will ever be. You are what you are but you will become what I make you into. I couldn’t care less about how old you are or how your circumstances have beat you down. I’m not concerned about whether you are in touch with you inner child or if all the people around you are affirming your self actualization.

You are what you are but you are not yet what you will become!

Watch this, Moses then ask a logical question... who are you, I want to know and the people you are sending me to are going to want to know. Assure me of your credentials!

I am what I am, I will be who I will be, I am who I will be, I will be who I am.

God is the only one who can make that statement without it being a negative statement.

And God consistently in Scripture says the same thing to each one of us...

A few years ago many children were taken by a low budget Japanese show dubbed into English called the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Normal adolescents that in times of crises could become martial arts heroes for justice. Their rallying cry was.... “it’s morphing time”

This sermon is not an endorsement of a show.... they borrowed the word from the Greek language and the word shows up in scripture in all the right places.

Mortho- the inward formation of the essential nature of a person..

Paul was agonizing for the Galatian people until they literally began to take on the very character of Jesus.

We are to be to Christ as the image is to the original.... illustrate

Which word are we looking for??

Transformed- Metamorphoo caterpillar turned butterfly

There is no room biblically for any of us to adopt the “I yam what I yam” theology...

Ordinary people can receive Divine power for extraordinary change!