CHANGE

"And I need you to change me!" This is a good prayer. Only God can author this kind of change. "Gonna take it away, take away my blame." Only God can take away blame, and that's exactly what Chuck Dennie was thinking when he wrote Change:

We were writing songs for this new record called These Days and I'd just gotten done reading the book Every Young Man's Battle and it was still on my heart and in my mind, and one of the things I thought was that there is one sin pattern that I just can't get rid of, there is something that is just constantly hindering me. It's this battle that goes on with lust.

"Every young guy I've run into with our band and with the different guys you run into on the road...well, it just seems like it is something that the enemy has such a foothold in our lives over. It just makes you sick!

"So I thought I would just try to find some scriptures that would apply to my life. I was reading 2 Corinthians 3 one day and it talks about how our hope and confidence doesn't come from us alone, but that it comes from Christ. I thought, That's really amazing to know that this battle isn't in my hands alone, but that it is in the Lord's hands. Ultimately, when you try to get rid of something, you call it a change. I wanted to write a song both about 2 Corinthians 3 and about change.

"Then I thought, Jesus went through every temptation and overcame them all perfectly! He's a super hero to me! So, I wrote this song called Superhero, but then I thought, Nah, that's kinda cheesy, so I made it into Change. It's just a song about asking God to come and change us, to make us different, to take away these sin patterns in our life. You know, to get things right and to make everything pure before the Lord."
Every Young Man's Battle DVD

Cheesy or not, Chuck was right. Jesus is our super hero, and He did overcome all perfectly. Chuck's song is a prayer asking the Lord to help us overcome, too. That's a great prayer, and when He "does it all" for us at times, it is more than welcome.

He's done that for me before. While I mentioned this story in Every Young Man's Battle, the moment seems right to share it again here:

After I settled into an apartment in Iowa after moving back from California my nights were monotonous and long. A man accustomed to entertaining four girlfriends isn't used to having his nights free!

In no time, thoughts of Janet began to swirl in my imagination. She was an old friend from high school, and I'd been enamored with her for years. Back then, I'd been too busy with football to start a relationship with her, but I'd often dreamed of sleeping with her.

I soon tracked her down and-what luck! She was still single and living in Omaha. I called her and, after some cheerful banter, she invited me to meet her at her favorite dance bar. Need I say more? After closing time, we found ourselves alone in her apartment. One thing led to another, and we slipped out of our clothes and slipped into her bed. We began kissing, but a strange thing happened: I couldn't get an erection! That had never happened before. Deeply humiliated, my head spinning, I slunk out to the parking lot and slumped into my car.

Then I clearly heard the Spirit whisper into my heart, "By the way, I did that to you. I know it hurt you, but this practice can't be tolerated anymore in your life. You are Christ's now, and He loves you." He didn't have to say it twice-on the spot I recommitted myself to staying pure!

Obviously, God knows how to step in and clean our houses all on His own when He wants to. Still, it is important to get a good grip on what happened here, or you'll make the same severe mistake in your approach to purity as another reader recently did after reading this story. "I have to admit I get mad at God when I read a story like this one. It's so unfair! Why doesn't God just step in and free me like that?"

Free me like that? I thought. What in the world is he talking about? God didn't free me in that moment. Sure, I stopped the intercourse. But I was still into porn. I was still masturbating. All He did was vividly get my attention in order to reframe things for me with His truth. Hasn't He done that same thing for you as you read that story, or at least through reading the rest of Every Young Man's Battle or the follow-up message in Tactics? What exactly are you looking for?

We must pray for God to change us, no question. "Never will I try to live this life here on my own." Neither should you.

But neither should you expect Jesus to do it all for you while you lay back and wait. Don't wait on miracles. Don't look for a sign. Look for the way out He's already promised you:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
1 Corinthians 10:13

Jesus will deliver all the grace and truth that you need, but He'll also expect you to stand up and fight. When His grace rains as you fight this battle, precious character grows in you. You learn how to live out His word. You learn to say no:

[Grace] teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope-the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
Titus 2:12-14

God wants a people eager to do what is good. In short, Christ has given you a role in "working out" your holiness in practice. Some say we have no role in this and, in a real sense, they're right. Only God can author holiness in a man's life. Christ's death and resurrection won our victory for us. Christ's new life is placed in us at salvation and works unceasingly towards holiness. Christ's power saves us and frees us to live holy lives, and He fulfilled His responsibility in all this at Calvary.

In spite of that, He keeps on fulfilling His responsibility today by sending the Holy Spirit, who guides us into truth and relentlessly draws us towards Christ. It's complete. Here again is what the Bible says:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
2 Peter 1:3-4

Still, that begs a very important question, doesn't it? If it's true that we have everything we need to escape the corruption, why aren't we all pure already?

That answer is an easy one: It's because we can say no to this New Life living in us. As long as you continue to say yes to that New Life speaking in you, you will continually move towards being a spiritual person in practice with the full mind of Christ.

If you start saying no, though, all bets are off. I could have said no to God after that incident with Janet and continued to chase women. Had I done so, I'd have stopped growing in this area of my life. My responsibility in this fight for purity is to continue saying yes to the Spirit as He works in me. Saying yes to the Spirit and no to sin is not "man's effort in a spiritual battle," and therefore doomed to fail. Do you know what the Bible calls your efforts in this battle? Your responsibility. The italicized phrases in the following verses mark out your responsibilities as you fight to win this war:

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
Romans 6:11-14

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming....So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
2 Peter 3:11-14

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
Romans 6:16-17

Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
2 Corinthians 7:1

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So, let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Romans 13:11-12

It is God's will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; ...For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-8

Clearly, you have a role in all this. In short, the Bible tells us that you must choose to walk rightly and to say yes to the new life of Christ. That isn't legalism. You don't follow his terms of sexual purity this tightly because you are under the law and you must follow or be squashed like a bug. You follow this tightly because you are under grace and you can follow. It is part of relationship.

Why do I make such a big deal out of this? Because waiting for Christ to do it all is Satan's biggest lie in the battle against sexual sin. He wants you to sit helplessly waiting by the altar of God and to ignore the Bible's call for you to actively flee sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Satan wants you to believe that you have no role, no responsibility, no power, no ability to flee and no ability to resist. Once you believe this, you are his, and you'll never be free. Why? Because of the obvious vulnerabilities in your male sexuality. You have eyes that can draw genuine sexual gratification from the pictures and girls around you. If you get lonely and disconnected, masturbation can fill those emotional holes with false intimacy because of the way you're made. Because of these two vulnerabilities, if you wait for God to do everything and you don't actively put up some defenses, the natural cracks and seams in your armor will play right into Satan's hands:

There is a natural progression of addiction in the average, everyday guy, because that's the way God made him sexually. You might as well face it. In an oversexed culture like ours, you are built to fail. Your undisciplined eyes will slip into this progression, not because there's something wrong with you, but because there's nothing wrong with you. Your unguarded sexuality will degrade beneath this broad load of sensual pollution, because your sexuality was never designed to handle it.
Tactics, Page 53

The truth is simple. We'll never be bulletproof like Superman because of those vulnerabilities, but we can become super men, or "at least free from this," as the song says. You can become a man of heroic strength and real character. That will rarely happen instantaneously, and you certainly won't yearn your way into it. Instead, God calls you to learn your way into it, through the battle. He calls you to obey your way into it, working out your salvation in practice as you give His grace free reign in your life.

My change began with my decision to "never try to live this life here on my own."

My change continued as I said yes to the Holy Spirit and I chose to follow Job 31:1 by making a tight covenant with my eyes.

My change was completed when grace finished its work and the sinful habits that had been haunting me "day and night" and had me desperately "trying to find a little peace inside my soul" were finally gone. Intimacy with Christ and His truth had grown exponentially, both speeding and ending the fight.

Most of us want to be freed on our terms. We want to be able to keep watching the same shows and listening to the same music as everyone else. Just pour the blood over the top of it all, Jesus, and toss in a dollop of miracles, too! We want to be given our promised land without the fight, but that's a foolish dream, and it would be horribly costly to our character.

But no worries. That's never been God's way. He's never given His people a promised land without asking them to press in and fight for it, whether it was taking over the Promised Land of Canaan in the Old Testament or making the Promised Land of Salvation in the New Testament ours in practice each day.

Chuck Dennie was right. "It is a battle of my conscience, a mind-game to resist." That is the battlefield. That is the fight that prepares us to occupy our Promised Land well, and that's the "working out" of our salvation that produces the mind of Christ in us and makes us the shining stars in this dark universe that He's called us to be, for His glory.