Shift

Time Change

At the time that I am  writing this post, we are about to change our clocks back one hour. I know that most people do not like the practice of changing the clocks and this is something that people can be pretty opinionated about. There are a couple of things that we should probably keep in mind. First, the days will have the same number of hours of both light and dark regardless of the clock so you're not losing daylight that you would have had if the clock didn’t change. The other thing to remember is that if the clocks never changed, then they would stay standard time all the time, which is the time that we have in the winter months.

This time of year does get us thinking about change. When you drive a vehicle, the transmission has to shift from one gear to another to allow the car to have the proper ratio and conversion of power from the engine to the wheels. (I’m not mechanically inclined so that could be stated more precisely.) In a similar way, you and I can be greatly helped by a shift in our thinking so that the way we are thinking and believing can drive us to godly behavior and action.

RPM

When talking about motors RPM refers to revolutions per minute. For the purposes of this article I am going to use those letters to start the three phrases that could help us to shift our hearts and minds so that we can glorify the Lord in our lives.

Reliance on God’s Revelation

Humanity is totally depraved. That does not mean that we are as evil and rebellious as we could be, but that we are sinful throughout our whole being (Romans 3:9-18;23). Because this is true, we cannot work our way to righteous standing with God. However, this fallen state extends not only to our moral actions and choices, but also to our minds. Our understanding, our intellectual capacities, and our reasoning abilities are also tainted by the deforming nature of our fallen state. This means that we cannot know God through human reason or philosophy or simply through the observation of the general revelation in creation (1 Corinthians 1:18-31). Rather, we must have the special revelation of the righteous character and nature of God in the Scriptures so that we can know God and worship Him rightly. We must have the illuminating presence of the Holy Spirit to understand the spiritual realities that can only be known by those who are spiritual (1 Corinthians 2:6-16). 

Plans According to God’s Purposes

God is sovereign, and He reigns providentially over His universe with distinct purposes. The universe is not random. Order pervades all of the creation (Isaiah 55:8-9). You even hear the evidence of this when unbelievers speak of how things in nature are designed or wired for certain things. Evolutionary theory cannot account for specificity of design through natural selection. Rather, in creation, what is clear is that God is accomplishing His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13). Everything in God’s universe has meaning in bringing Him glory, one way or another. This means that nothing in your life is inconsequential. Nothing happening to you or being done by you is unimportant because everything matters.

Minds Focused on Eternity with God

Ultimately, probably the greatest thing that can help finite beings like ourselves to shift our hearts and minds toward the grandeur of the transcendent God is to have an eternity focused perspective. We need to be thinking about things from an eternal point of view. Temporal thinking will always be tempting us to take shortcuts and resort to pragmatic methods instead of opting for faithful obedience. But our home and citizenship are in heaven and so our perspective should be for the long range not just the next step (Philippians 3:20-21). Even when all we can see through the fog of our present suffering is the next step we must remember that there is an eternal glory that we cannot now fully comprehend (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

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