A few years ago, the dominant interest of most 6-8 year-old boys was a group of teenage superheroes called the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Their rallying cry in time of crisis was, “It’s morphing time!” And with that battle cry these seemingly ordinary boys would be transformed into extraordinary boys. Before the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were the Transformers. Their tag line was, “Robots in disguise! More than meets the eye!”You thought they were a ship or an airplane or a truck, but really they were super powerful robots with all kinds of hidden abilities.

Of course, it’s not just little boys who want to morph. The desire for transformation lies deep in every human heart. This is why people enter therapy, join health clubs, get into recovery groups, read self-help books, attend motivational seminars, and make New Year’s resolutions. It’s why cosmetic surgery is so popular…people don’t like the way they are!John Ortberg says, “The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope.”Paul writes in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And word ‘transformed’ comes from theGreek word ‘metamorphoo’. In ancient literature it was used to describe the formation and growth of an embryo in a mother’s body. So Paul is saying, “From the time you accept Christ you enter into a spiritual gestation process.”John describes this spiritual transformation using the phrase ‘born again’ (John 3); which means all of us are pregnant with possibilities of spiritual growth and spiritual beauty and spiritual transformation. It is this same word and concept from which we get our English word metamorphosis. Jesus is not just offering us a changed life, but an exchanged life!And nothing communicates that better than the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

I mean think about a caterpillar for a moment. Your whole life all you know are a few leaves, some dirt, a few other bugs and then you take this long nap…and think about what goes through a caterpillar’s mind when he wakes! He’s like, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED HERE!!!”And then he breaks out of the cocoon and starts flying!Talk about a transformation!All he’s known was life on the earth, and now he has this totally different perspective!He can see from above, he is flying above his old life of dirty logs and moss covered rocks. It’s now flowers and the tops of trees and he can fly from one nation to another!He’s not just crossing twigs, he’s crossing oceans!Talk about expanded horizons!

And here’s a cool piece of trivia for you. Do you know what their wings are made of?The wings of a butterfly are actually made of crystallized waste. Their wings are made of their own waste. So what Paul is saying is that God can take my mess of a life, my sin, and all the time and energy I’ve wasted and turn it into something beautiful and useful.

It’s the very power of God to create life!It’s the very power of God to change a life!That same power is in me and it is in you!Soak in these words: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (II Corinthians 5:17) You have already been transformed! Again, you are busting with spiritual potential and beauty and power! and you want it!

But…honesty time…most Christians have settled for what I’m going to call ‘pseudo-morphoo’ or ‘pseudo-transformation.’There are two colonies of pseudo-morphoo butterflies in the American church today. The first colony is filled with butterflies who choose to walk. They are saved people, justified people who were once caterpillars and God transformed them into butterflies. They started out excited about being butterflies and they even tasted the high life, they flew, the spread their wings, but the pull of the world was too strong. And on a daily basis they find themselves more conformed to the pattern of this world, instead of being transformed daily by the renewing of their mind. They have wings, but they’re choosing to walk and deep inside they know they’re missing out and they get really convicted from time to time by a sermon or a song, but they don’t take steps to change their lifestyle pattern or they really don’t know how to. More specifically, church attendance is not crucial to this crowd, tithing is inconsistent, their language isn’t holy, their marriages aren’t what they could be, they’ve quit praying, the Bible confuses them so why bother, and on and on I could go.

Because I don’t want anyone to be satisfied with the term ‘Casual Christian’ and I don’t want anyone to miss out on the real life that Jesus is offering, let me repeat a simple point I made this past weekend: The Christian life is all about how you spend your time and what you feed your mind.As the old anti-drug campaigns of the 1980’s used to say, “The mind is a terrible thing to waste,” and the challenge this week is all about what we are feeding our minds. We don’t want to waste one of the greatest gifts God has given us, which is our ability to think. By memorizing scripture, reading, listening to worship music and having conversations with substance, we are setting ourselves up for spiritual success.

The second colony of pseudo-morphoo butterflies in the American church are the butterflies who stay in the cocoon. They too have been justified and saved and will be in heaven like the walking butterflies, but they really like the comfort of the cocoon. The cocoon is warm and safe and it doesn’t take long for their wings and minds to atrophy and not only do they lose that ability to fly, they sometimes keep others from flying. The cocoon I’m referencing is a Sunday morning church service. For many Christians, one hour a week sums up the totality of their spiritual experience each week. This is not sad, this is tragic! I don’t want anyone to miss out on experiencing Jesus every day!

Jesus spoke to the deepest longings of the human heart to become not simply conformed to a religious subculture but to be transformed into new creatures, new creations, that create new cultures characterized by real life, real relationships, and real joy!Instead of focusing on boundaries, Jesus focused on the center, the heart of the spiritual life. When asked to identify what the law was about, Jesus simply said, “Love God and love people.”The rulers and teachers of the law in the days of Jesus were frustrated by his answer. This is why the spent so much time debating with him about circumcision, dietary laws, and the 39 man-made Sabbath day regulations. They didn’t like a system of grace. Why? Jesus was threatening their very understanding of themselves as the people of God. They liked the cocoon because they could control it! They didn’t want to change anything. Change is life threatening to cocoon dwellers! And typically people in the American church who don’t like to change music styles or approaches to ministry are the ones who aren’t growing spiritually. How can you grow spiritually when nothing in your life has changed for 40 plus years! But truth be told, change is what the Spirit does to us! Change is what he promises us!

You may feel like you can’t change because you’ve created some unhealthy habits in your life and you’ve grown so accustomed to them, they actually feel like an extension of who you are. If you feel that way about your life, can I challenge you to remember Christian, Tonya, and Mike and their testimonies? All three of them are living examples that anyone anywhere can change anything with the help of the Spirit!So don’t give up hope! By taking this challenge you are saying “yes” to change!

I’m praying for you to move from walking, from life in the cocoon to flying!