Why Should I Change?

As we have been going through ‘The Excellent Wife’ with our women’s ministry I keep being struck by the need for us to have motivation to change. With a title like ‘The Excellent Wife’ I think it is easy to either decide that it’s too hard to be like that and give up, or think that we’re fine the way we are and not bother changing anything, or feel guilty because we’re not meeting Biblical standards and get discouraged.

We shouldn’t feel guilty as Christians, because if we have truly repented and believed in Jesus to save us then God now views us with the covering of the righteousness of Christ, and all our sins have been forgiven, past, present and future. But that still leaves us with two negative attitudes which can totally stop us from wanting to grow, change or become more like Christ in our Christian lives. Greg Laurie calls Christians who have them the ‘stragglers‘ and the ‘drifters‘. The stragglers think it’s all too hard and say, ‘I didn’t know I could’. The drifters think they’re fine the way they are and say, ‘I didn’t know I should’. And the result is that we just sit there, passively absorbing sermons and Bible readings and praying generally, but not really going anywhere. So I had it on my heart to talk about ‘Why?’ Why should we change? If all our sins are forgiven as Christians – past, present, and future – what’s the point of stopping sinning and living to please God?

My husband’s reasoning for what he does is, ‘My life is not my own, I was bought at a price’, and he is passionate about living for Jesus, who died for Him. My main motivation is the same – I just love the last lines of that hymn ‘Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all!’

But there are many more reasons why we should want to obey God:

• To please God and show Him we love Him. Jesus said, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’ Jn 14:15. God loved us so much that He gave his only son to die for us. He loves us so much that He listens to and answers our prayers even though He created the universe and we are nothing by comparison! That makes me want to show my love to Him however I can.
• To avoid grieving God by our sin
• To keep a clear conscience before Him
• To be fruitful and used by God – we can’t bear fruit unless we abide in Christ Jn 14:4,5. If you don’t have a desire to be fruitful I recommend you read some biographies of missionaries, like Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, Jim Elliot and many more. Reading those inspired me big time to want to be used by God, and does the same every time I read them!
• To avoid God’s discipline
• To get out from under the control of sin and live like we’re supposed to be living, free in Christ, and walking in the Spirit!
• To do our best to live in a way that unbelievers might be saved through watching our lives
• To receive blessings from God – this promise is all through the Bible, just read Psalm 1 for an example!
• To lay up treasures in heaven – everything on this earth will be gone one day whereas eternity will go on for, well, forever!! So really, what is the point of doing our own thing when it will all be gone soon, and we could be working toward eternal things which will be lasting? ‘Seek those things which are above’ Col 3:1
• For a deeper walk with God – I love this verse: ‘Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.’ John 14:21 I have always envied Enoch who ‘walked with God, and was not because God took him’. I would love to be that close to God and really feel like I was walking with the King of the Universe!!
• For peace ‘let your heart keep my commands; for length of days and long life and peace they will add to you’ Prov 3:2 I can testify that I have had much greater peace from concentrating on doing what God wants than on my own selfish desires.
• For a joyful life – one of the fruits of the Spirit. God gives us real and lasting joy.

As a wife in particular, besides being motivated by these things I am also motivated to be an excellent wife because:
1. I know that God has called me to be a wife, and when I stand before Him on judgment day I want to hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ If he has called me to be a wife, then I want to be the best wife I can be!
2. I think that if I am the best wife I can be then it will help my husband to fulfil his potential and be all he can be. We can so easily hinder our husbands through discouragement, or pulling them back from what they want to do, and I think the opposite is true as well – that we can also greatly help them.
3. I want our marriage to be happy and blessed. I firmly believe that even if there is only one spouse working at the marriage it can really make a big difference (not that that is the case in ours!), so I want to do my part in that. And surrounded by so much divorce I want to do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen to us. ‘Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall’ 1 Cor 10:12

I hope some of these things help motivate you to live more for God, and if you are a wife, to want to be an excellent one 🙂 I wish more Christians would move from a passive existence to being on fire, motivated to be sold out for Him!

If you are reading this and are not a Christian, maybe you wish you could talk to God. We were made to know God and walk with Him as Adam and Eve did in the garden, but our sin has separated us from Him. God sent His son to die for us so that He could make a way to bring us back to God. If you would like to know more, or have questions,  please e-mail me.