We are fallen dreamers, who dream of better worlds than the one in which we live. But the dreams we envision are often more about our own agenda than they are about our Lord's. Though we may not be aware of it, we are often at odds with our wise and loving Lord. The change he is working on is not the change we dream about. We dream about change in it—a person or circumstance—but God is working in the midst of it to change us.

The Bible reminds us that God wants—and deserves—to be the defining center of both these things. When I live out of a biblical sense of who I am (identity) and rest in who God is (worship), I will be able to build a healthy relationship with you. These are not abstract theological concepts. We're talking about the content and character of our hearts.

We all want the wrong things, but God is in the business of changing what we want.

When I live out of a biblical sense of who I am (identity) and rest in who God is (worship), I will be able to build a healthy relationship with you.

For this reason we can say that we all live theologically; that is, the things we believe about God and ourselves are the foundation for all the decisions we make, all the actions we take, and all the words we speak.

Either I get my identity vertically, out of my sense of who God is and worship who he has made me in Christ, or I will seek to get my identity horizontally, out of my circumstances, relationships, and successes.

Change within community is counterintuitive to the way we often think, but Scripture clearly presents it as God's way of making us more like Christ.

Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities. While divorce, depression, and single parenthood are significant human experiences, they are not identities. Our work is not our identity, though it is an important part of how God intends us to live. For too many of us, our sense of identity is more rooted in our performance than it is in God's grace.

Jesus is pointing to an internal reality of grace that expresses itself in observable changes in individuals and their relationships.

We are to be in the world, though not of it. Often Christians have evaded the challenge of this call by defining their role as salt in negative terms. They have simply denounced bad things in the culture and been against things rather than for them.

Positive personal change takes place when my dreams of change line up with God's purposes for change.

Nothing is more obvious than the need for change. Nothing is less obvious than what needs to change and how that change happens.