Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to our series on Transformation. Last week we laid the basic premise that from the moment of birth to the moment of death, transformation and change are inevitable. We are transformed into the image of our decisions, both the compartively few big ones and the accumulating and accumulated hundreds of thousands of little ones.

I hope we are all agreed that it is only those forces which we allow to affect us actually do. We have incredible power to effect change for good or evil both in our personal lives and in the lives of those around us. This places an enormous responsibility upon each one of us to make the right decisions and the right choices with that incredible power of agency Yahweh has given us, which so terrifies Calvinists and other fatalists like Moslems. It's so much easier to blame Yahweh for predestining everything we do when things don't happen the way we would like, or of we refuse to blame Him, to instead somehow perversely affirm that evil gives Him 'glory' as Calvinists do.

Now I realise that in presenting life as constituting millions of minute and not so minute choices may not at first seem quite so simple. And it's true that there are many other factors in our vast universe that make the possibility of upward spiritual transformation seem highly questionable. Sometimes the forces that assail us seem utterly overwhelming. And I'd be the first to admit that there are some things incredibly hard to fathom, sometimes distressingly so. We all have our tragedies and perplexities to deal with. However, we do have very real choices as to how we respond to them. Because when something goes wrong, our first impulse is usually to blame someone else, and to look around for some way of evading responsibility. We're warned early on in the human story not to do this when Adam sought to blame Eve for the mess that both their sinning got them into:

"The woman you gave me for a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree and I ate it" (Gen.3:12, NEB).

Most people on earth blame Elohim (God) for the plight of our planet and of mankind. You know the excuse, 'If God is so powerful, why didn't He make a world that couldn't go wrong?', as if we weren't responsible for making any bad decisions ourselves. Adam told a half truth - Eve did indeed try to entice Adam, but Adam was not ignorant - he was not deceived as Eve was (1 Tim.2:14). He knew exactly what he was doing. Evasions don't evade, excuses don't excuse, and dodging doesn't dodge, except propel us into deeper problems. We have to accept responsibility for our own actions individually, and for humanity's actions collectively, and not blameshift to Elohim (God). When we acceot our culpability, that kind of repentance leads to better relatedness to Yahweh and far more inner peace with ourselves.

When something bad happens to a Moslem he blames his kismet of 'fate'. When I was a tutor at Oxford I had a rich Moslem student who kept on getting parking tickets because he repeatedly parked on a double-yellow line. When I asked him why he didn't just park in a proper place, and what he thought about all the fines he had received, he would simply say 'kismet'.

When a Hindu or Buddhist gets into trouble, he blames his karma - the result of deeds of a previous birth now catching up with him. And as one authority on Indian customs said of this approach to life:

"He removes the responsibility from the 'now' to the 'then' and to a person of whom he has no memory. It saves him from the necessity of finding the cause in his present actions and attitudes."

Here, in the West, people evade their responsibilities in all kinds of interesting ways. When I was younger they used to blame the stars and planets. Modernists used to blame the subconscious and claim that the drives that go on down there are, in large measure, out of our control. It was Mars, in a special allignment, that made us angry and aggressive, they said. Others used to blame the environment and claim that man is just an animal in a cage, and all his actions result from an attempt to adapt to his environment. These days, with the sudden ascendency of Postmodernism, it's common to blame global warming ('climate change') and 'systemic racism'. It seems anything goes provided it circumvents personal responsibility.

Yet another cop-out is to say that we're doing what everyone else is doing...following the crowd, so the crowd is somehow to blame as a collective. That's just spreading out the responsibility as thinly as possible. Blaming others for ones own behaviour is the default reflex of the fallen, carnal, fleshy nature. When you analyse it, that's quite absurd. Our behaviour and the character which reflects it is ours and nobody else's, so the only way out is to lay the blame where it belongs, on ourselves, and not on other people's behaviour. Because whatever may happen to us outwardly, there are always at least two possible, radically opposite responses we can make. Yes, bad things happen in this world, but how we respond to them is what matters, because that's what shapes who were are. And the choice, contrary to the claims of the fatalists, is always ours.

Now I'm not pretending this is necessarily an easy thing to do. Taking responsibility is one of the litmus tests for growing up - for maturing, both for individuals and societies as a whole. And the West has devolved into a very, very immature and selfish society indeed precisely because self-responsiblity is no longer a highly prized value. That is because Marxism worships the collective and hates individualism, and Marxism is on the ascendency. Adamic man has always sought to evade responsibility for what it is. Admitting that this is true then leads to a dilemma of sorts which in turn can lead to desperation. A typical conversation we might have with ourself goes like this:

"Nothing can be done for me, as although I accept responsibility for what I am, there are really two persons inside me, one striving to be good, and the other striving to be bad. The bad is too strong for me. I'm not affected by outside forces. I'm beaten - by myself!"

That inner reality of our divided condition is vividly expressed by the poet Browning:

"Sadly mixed natures; self-indulgent, yet
Self-sacrificing too: how the love soars,
How the craft, avaraice, vanity and spite
Sink again!"

This condition of the divided self is the tragedy of mankind but it isn't hopeless. Paul brings us a message of hope:

"For we know that the Torah (Law) is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the Torah (Law) that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the Torah (Law) of Elohim (God) according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank Elohim (God) -- through Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) our Master (Lord)! So then, with the mind I myself serve the Torah (Law) of Elohim (God), but with the flesh the law of sin" (Rom.7:14-25, NKJV - Evidence Bible, p.1615).

The answer to Paul's dilemma, which faces us all, even those who have made a decision for Christ, is to be found in the next chapter of Romans, chapter 8, and it is that I would like to invite you to carefully read afterwards as a Sabbath Day exercise. You see, Paul discovered the answer to the age-old human dilemma of the conflict between the Christ-nature and the carnal nature. The answer, simply, is Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) Himself. He, and he alone, can solve your inner dilemma. Human psychology cannot and ends up in simply putting different clothes on the problem, because the core issue is the sin-nature - the outer behaviour is simply the symptoms of that problem. The Everlasting Mercy in pursuing you has set up a war within your soul that desperately needs resolution. The pangs you feel are His prods - prodding you to become a spiritually transformed person.

So let us some to a biblically sound conclusion. When we are willing to lay the blame for our moral plight squarely on ourselves and no one else, not even those who may have done terrible things to us (for which they will be held accountable), then - and only then - can spiritual transformation begin within us. When a man or a woman stands up and says:

"I am responsible for the kind of person I am. I am what I wanted to be. Now I've changed my mind. I'm sorry for what I've done. I'm going to ask Yahweh's forgiveness, and the forgiveness of any I have hurt on the way up through life, and, with His love and grace flowing through me, I shall be different."

As soon as you take that step, sincerely, you will discover that a miracle is about to begin. Yes, that's the word I deliberately chose, "miracle", because that's what it is. Now I used the words, "about to begin", deliberately as well because spiritual transformation - and I mean that in the Christian/Messianic sense of the word - takes place when the words become a true expression of the feelings. It is not enough to say it verbally, it must be said vitally - with the whole person behind it. When you stop being a puppet, that's to say, someone being pushed around by pressures and problems from the past - and be a person - someone who accepts the responsibility of making a sound decision - then you are at the point of 'transformation', which the Bible calls conversion.

So the first step in becoming a Christian/Messianic - and I mean that in the sense of it being with your whole being and not just in your head - the first step is to accept the responsibility of making a decision that you, and only you, can make. No one else can make it for you - not even Elohim (God) Himself because He does not interfere with our agency in the way Calvinists and Moslems believe He does! That is His sovereign will. You first of admit that you are a sinner, and that you are responsible for the way you have been. As you do this, then put your life, just as it is, into Yahweh's hands through His Son, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), and you will discover the power of Elohim (God) will release itself into your life, and the transformation upward will begin. It's really that simple but - and it's a big 'but' - the cost, which is not small, is your pride and your willfulness to do what you want and in your own way. It means beginning a radically new life, not simply bringing along your old ways and tacking them onto a new lifestyle, because the Torah won't work properly in your life without the chayim (life) power of the Torah-giver who paid for your sins - your attempt at life apart from Him - on the cross at Calvary.

Nobody wants to be half-born. I've watched chicks struggling to get out of their eggs and there's no question of stopping half-way. It's all or nothing. But once out of that shell, then comes the glory and exhilaration, the unabashed simcha or joy! Have you ever seen a dog do a dance after it has pooped? It's celebrating getting the muck out of its system and as you know poor old Max, our youngest dog, has been having terrible constipation problems for weeks and weeks and been in abject misery, unable to eat properly either. But then, the day before, he suddenly cleared his bowels, danced his gig, and has been eating healthily again since! The new birth is a bit like that because it involves shedding the burden of the sin-nature and exchanging it for Christ's. It's as simple at that. A straight exchange, one or the other, and thereafter it becomes our responsibility to maintain that status quo. The alternative is going back to the painful, miserable, constipated life - seriously!

I think we need to talk more about this in the weeks ahead and get back to basics because it's so easy to get sidetracked by the deep stuff. For myself - and I have been really ill again this last couple of days - it has seemed like an impossible situation to get out of health-wise. Yesterday as I cried up to Yahweh for guidance and help, I saw this intense vision of burning flames, a pretty good illustration of what my body feels like right now, but at the centre of those swirling flames, with a tiny, intensely bright, white cross! The presence of Yah'shua (Jesus) is everything, but we can only maintain that presence, having first received it on the terms on which He is given, if we are willing to live a continuing life of humility and repentance when we make mistakes, and get back on course again. Years ago Yah'shua (Jesus) expicity told me in a revelation you'll find in the Olive Branch to "preach the cross, and nothing but the cross", something I occasionally have to be reminded of if I get overly absorbed in a gospel hobby horse, so this message is as much for me as anyone else.

So Father, please help us not to complicate things by our egocentric attitudes and self-centered ideas. We want to be as simple and direct abd You are with us in Your Davar (Word). Please help us to this end in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen.

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