inspirational devotion

Do you believe God or do you just not want to change? 
by Jon Walker

We should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has

died has been freed from sin. Romans 6:6–7 (NIV)

There’s an amusing story of a businessman who, at the end of a long day

of travel, climbs into bed at a hotel. As he begins to nod off, he feels

something crawling up his legs.

Leaping up and fumbling with the light, he throws back the sheets

to discover the bed is full of bugs.

Changing rooms is not enough to satisfy the man’s disgust. When he

gets home, he writes a letter of complaint to the hotel’s corporate

headquarters.  Weeks later, he receives a reply directly from the  

president of the company:

“We are absolutely appalled that a man of your position and reputation

should have had such an experience in one of our hotels. We are deeply

embarrassed, and we assure you that we are working diligently to correct

 this problem. It will never happen again."

As he reads the reply, the businessman feels great! The hotel management

has heard him; they’re committed to making a change; and now every

customer will benefit from his initiative.

But when he folds the letter back into the envelope, a small Post-It note

falls to the floor. Picking it up, the man sees in a hand-written scrawl,

“Send this guy the bug letter."

This week Pastor Rick showed me I’ve been sending “bug letters" to God.

In other words, I’ve developed some standard responses related to God’s

commands and directions.

It’s easy to say I’ll get serious about my health, to say I’ll press on to

God’s goals, to say I’ll make the changes necessary to follow Jesus

toward my destiny, but the hard part is actually following through on

those commitments.

Are you with me here? We tell God we can’t change, but what we really

mean is we won’t take our health seriously, we won’t stop overeating,

we won’t follow Jesus toward our destiny. So we pull out our form

letters – our standard responses that allow us to appear sincere when,

in truth, we have no intention of changing.

Do you believe God can’t change you or do you just not want to change?

You are free, no longer a slave to unhealthy choices. You can choose to let

God transform your life and be confident that he will.

This devotional is by Jon Walker, editor of the Daily Hope Devotionals