This is a multi part topic and this is the second in the series in asking the question, “Does God Change His Mind,” or has God set in motion everything that ever will happen? The “CHANGEABLENESS” of God is not in question as to whether God is reliable and consistent with his character and action, but does God change with regard to our behavior or heart attitude.

I have been a believer for over 50 years and I have heard a lot of teachings and sermons on receiving a “CALLING” from God.  I think most of those teaching have been about some type of ministry calling yet rarely are they on what Jesus meant when referring to the idea of calling. In my estimation, Jesus rarely talked about ministry calling and almost exclusively talked about the calling that God presents to mankind for relationship.

Believe it or not, the title is an important question because what we believe about how God responds or doesn’t respond to our actions, especially with regards to our prayers, makes all the difference in the world. Prayer is the most vital link we have with God because scripture reveals, in general, the mind and will of God for the believer but it is prayer that creates and develops the relational side of our relationship.

I wonder how the people we know think or view us? Do they think we are reliable people or would they think we are just “TALKERS” and not doers? As Christians we should be the most reliable people around, but I fear more than not that believers are getting sloppy in the area of reliability.

If you read the scriptures long enough you start to realize a few things that seem to run contrary to how you think and process life. One thing in particular is the challenge to “BELIEVE” what you can’t seem to see. 

Have you ever wondered how you would change your past if you had the ability to go back in time? I think most of us would make different choices if we are honest about the past.  It might be about taking one kind of job over another or moving to a new city or even the friends we chose. Regardless of the individual details, our choices about the future have significant effects our life, both in terms of our fulfillment and our fruitfulness.

Reading the account of the birth of Jesus I think we look at the story through our own life perspective and miss the truly humbling circumstances in which Mary and Joseph fulfilled the will of God. Then they had to deal with the circumstances of both poverty and the hatred of the government through king Herod.

Receiving Jesus into our lives is meant to be a transformative experience, not a transitory experience, nor a one-time experience. It was meant to be from now through eternity, but sadly it is often a short-lived experience, just like the many broken marriages of today.  

When I look at the landscape of how people think and act these days, for both non Christians as well as Christians, there seems to be a disconnect between what a person believes or feels and what are the plain facts before them. People don’t seem to be bothered by the inconsistencies in their lives, let alone in the lives of those around them. It seems people just get entrenched in certain lines of thinking without asking themselves if the things they believe are true or false. Maybe we just hate the idea of finding out that we are wrong about something and thus don’t want to know our error.