Words have value based on who speaks them. If you've got a friend and that friend's always telling lies to you and that person tells you something, you'll just ignore it. Right? Because you think, ah, they're always telling me lies. I don't know what to believe. Words have value based on who speaks them. Now on the other hand, let's say you've got a really good friend who you love and you trust and you respect because they're a man or a woman of character and virtue. And that person says something to you that you violently disagree with, that challenges you to change your life in a deep way, you will listen to that person in a different way because words have value based on who speaks them. Because you love and trust them and respect them as people of virtue in character, you'll hear them in a different way.
And so the Gospels have this real power, incredible power that very often is untapped in our lives. New Year's resolution this year? Not too many New Year's resolutions. You've failed so many times you think, no. No New Year's resolution this year. One of the most popular New Year's resolutions, most popular New Year's resolution is to lose weight. But one of the most popular New Year's resolutions is to read the Bible. This is the year I'm going to read the Bible, people say to themselves. So, right around now, usually around in October, people go out and they buy a new Bible, because the old one didn't work, so they go out, they buy a new Bible and they bring it home. They don't start in October because it's a New Year's resolution. So they wait, they actually wait two and a half months until the 1st of January. 1st of January, they take out that new Bible and they get started.
January's great. You got Genesis. I mean so many rich great stories. And then you got Exodus. They're fine until about the middle of April, they're in Leviticus, they want to shoot themselves. They're thinking what on earth is going on here?
Here's the thing, the word of God has the power to transform our lives. Now sometimes there's these big intellectual arguments about, why don't people read the Bible more? As far as I'm concerned, it's an easy answer to that question. People don't read the Bible more because the word of God has the power to transform our lives. And the truth is, we don't want our lives transformed. If we're honest with each other, we don't really want our lives transformed. We want some tweaking. Seriously, we want some tweaking, but transformation? No, no, no. No, thank you, God.
And we avoid the word of God because the word of God has the power to transform our lives. And very often when we pray, we pray for tweaking, don't we? Dear God, please tweak this. And dear God, please tweak that. And please tweak my husband and tweak him again. And tweak my children and tweak my boss and tweak my colleagues. We pray for tweaking. And I don't know if you've noticed, but God doesn't answer many tweaking prayers. And sometimes we'll pray over and over and over for tweaking. And we think, why doesn't God answer my prayer? The reason is because God is not in the business of tweaking. God is in the business of transformation.
And the truth is, many of us have never really prayed a prayer of transformation. Many of us have never really come to God and say, all right, God, everything's on the table, transform me, transform me, transform my marriage, transform my personal finances, transform my health, transform my family, transform my career, transform me and my life, God. It's a hard prayer to pray.
Matthew Kelly
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