RELIGION: 'Changed' by Rodney Tilley

BY PASTOR RODNEY TILLEY, VAN HORN COMMUNITY CHURCH

  I am sitting here tonight listening to a song recommended to me called, “Changed” by Rascal Flatts.  It is a great song and talks of how the person had changed and had started over.

The lyrics spoke to me and the video on YouTube was excellent, but I ask, “Can it really be true?” I hear this many times when people give testimonies in church and someone will say, “I am Christian,” and “I am changed,” as if changing one’s name changes one’s life, but that is not always the case. I know as a baby just about to be born, my mother was going to name me Rodney Allan Tilley, but just before I was born, someone told her that my initials would be RAT so she quickly reversed the name to Allan Rodney Tilley so my initials would be ART.
 

But guess what? I was the same little baby boy. I may not have been a RAT, but I sure was not a work of ART, and in my confusion she still called me Rodney. I was not changed.

 You see, the only way I could really change would be to go back and start over and be born again in another time and in another place, and maybe even by another mother.  You may have heard that phrase spoken in church and read the book by Chuck Colson, “Born Again,” and thought it was just a play on semantics and words without meaning, but Jesus when he talked about being “Born Again” in John 3, meant that you would have to go back spiritually and start over and be forever changed. It would not just be a name change, but it would be a heart change, a soul change, a change from the inside out.
You had been born, but born in sin, and sin was the father of your soul, and the mother of your actions. You thought I can change where I live and isolate myself in Lobo and I will be different, but the same person with the same name followed you there. To be totally honest, you must be born again from above by Christ our Savior, with a new life, and then when they call you “Christian,”(which means the son of Christ), you will know that your life has began anew.

 Being changed may begin with a song, begin with a dream, begin with a conviction, but true change comes when you start with a clean slate and a new life, with your old life erased and forever forgotten. You die to who you are and you change, not to a cow walking the streets, nor a cat curled up in front of the fire, but you are changed into what God always wanted you to be, a child of His. Then you will sing the song, “Changed” to the top of your lungs with a new love and a smile on your face- forever changed by God. Come on it is time to change. For more information on this change call: Pastor Rodney at 432-207-0015.

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