When I was in school, my values were twisted. The only solution people offered me was a firm talk about changing my behavior. They told me my behavior would get me killed or in jail. They told me to stop doing what I was doing. They wanted me to modify my behavior. That was a pointless effort though, because my behavior was informed by my values. What I needed was new values. My behavior wouldn’t change, unless my values changed, and my values wouldn’t change unless I was somehow transformed into a new person.
I desperately needed what’s called a worldview transformation.
See, worldviews are subtle and deep-seated, and they are usually taken for granted, since we can’t see, hear, or touch them. Worldviews are our culturally structured assumptions, values, commitments, and allegiances that create our perception of reality. Basically, they explain are how and why you view the world the way you do, and then govern how you respond to the world.
In writing to the Ephesian churches, Paul prays this: “…that…God…may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints…” (1:17-18 ESV). Paul is praying that the Ephesian churches would be illuminated to the truth – truth which only the Holy Spirit can reveal to them. In order to hear from God through His word, we must be made alive; we must be born again.
Second Corinthians 5:17 reads, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The Holy Spirit of God not only rebirths us, but continues to transform us and our worldview to His own.
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