A Closer Look at Creekside Electives

Here you are, another day at this job with this boss and these co-workers. Your boss is just a complete idiot. He undervalues your contributions and somehow thinks your co-worker is a dream. Don’t they see how incompetent they are? You’re the one who is always doing all the extra work and never seeming to get the credit you deserve. It seems like you can never get ahead in this job when you deserve so much more.
Or, maybe you find yourself at the grocery store, rushing around, trying to do last minute shopping before some company comes over. Of course, you’re only there because your spouse forgot to pick up what was needed, so now you’re having to run around last-minute to cover up their mistakes. After 14 years of marriage and they’re still forgetting the important things and you’re having to clean up their mistakes. When will they learn? Won’t they ever be the spouse you deserve? When will they treat you the same way you treat them? You begin to recognize there are roots of bitterness springing up all over your heart as you think about your spouse and all their flaws.
Maybe now you’re in the express checkout line at Wal-Mart, and in front of you is a person with what feels like 3,000 items and the clerk is slower than a sloth. You can start to feel the temperature rising in your chest. If this takes any longer you are going to lose your mind. How could this person in front of you be so inconsiderate to bring 22 items into the 20 items or less line? What an absolute dummy!
Perhaps you’re downtown, eating dinner at your favorite restaurant and you see an old acquaintance come in with another new man in tow. My word. When will she ever be able to settle down and quit going out with guy after guy after guy after guy. Time to pick up the cell phone and send an incriminating picture to all your friends so you can have a hot piece of juicy gossip to talk about.
Or, maybe you’re just so tired of being a stay-at-home-parent and having to deal with these kids. Warning after warning of needing to keep the house clean seems to bounce off their ears and you find a disastrous mess. Again. Instantly, you go off on them, yelling at them, bringing up past failures, raging with threats for the future, full of unrighteous anger towards your kids.
Perhaps, you find yourself at the end of a long day, which was in the middle of an exhausting week, which was part of a long month, and you just need something to soothe your wounds and take the edge off. Instead of going to God with your pain, struggles, and fears, you find yourself looking to food to comfort and satisfy you. You begin to recognize that your natural response to stress and difficulty is to numb that noise with excess food, instead of seeking the Lord.
You see, friends, all these situations are normal and common to us. Day after day, throughout the humdrum of life, situations happen, events take place, and God continues to reveal to us that we have places in our hearts where sin has taken root and it needs to be killed. Most of us can see some of those places within ourselves. We recognize there are pieces of our hearts that badly need transformation.
The hard part of the questions is, “what do we do about it? How can I really change?”
Most of us don’t want to continue being the angry parent who cannot control their temper. We don’t want impatience to rule our hearts. We don’t want our mouths to be used for the destroying nature of gossip. But how can we change? It seems impossible sometimes!
Our goal for our “How People Change” Electives class is to see how God works in us to produce real, genuine, heart-level transformation, fueled by a love for Christ and His Gospel. We’ll work together to identify places where we each need transformation and seek how God might want to change us in those places so that we can become more like Christ as we pursue holiness together.
I hope you’ll sign up and join us!
Sign up for electives here