I love the Fall. The cool breezes & the fall colors. I love the smells of cinnamon apple pie or vanilla sugar wax melts & of course pumpkin spice coffee. I even like the corny fall jokes like Fall in love with Jesus, He will never leave, or how do you fix a broken pumpkin? With a pumpkin patch! 

The fall brings change into our lives. Change can be a good thing because we get so comfortable in our ways that we don’t want to improve or change color. As Christians, we are set in a process of change. Just like the seasons bring change, we are being changed into the image of Jesus Christ. 

2Co 3:18  But we all, with uncovered faces beholding the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 

We have a tree down the road from us that is like half orange and half green. It almost seems like its resisting the change. Sometimes, I feel like that tree in my relationship to God. God wants to change all of me but part of me is still resisting his work in my life. God wants to make us more like his son. Which is a good thing but it requires some cleaning & some work by us & the Holy Spirit. We have a hard time getting rid of bad habits or sins that we are not willing to let go. The Bible says in I Pet 5 that “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” 

I know it’s something we don’t like to think about but in order for leaves to change there color they have to be willing to die. Jesus said that if we want to follow him we have to be willing to die to self & take up our cross. Our pride struggles with the change but the only way to truly change is to humble yourself before God & his work in your life. 

Gal 2:20  I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 

Christian, I want to challenge you today to think about change. Has there been any change in your life toward becoming more like Christ? DO you have longer devotions? Is your faith Stronger? Have you let go of some sins that had a hold on you? Are you kinder, more loving, more forgiving? Or has nothing changed on your tree? Are you still the same Christian that you were last year? Some say the tree that resists the change will not properly grow & bloom in the spring. May God help us to be willing to change into his image & show our beautiful colors this fall. Fall for Jesus.

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Matthew Spoonhour is pastor of First Baptist Church, Monroe.