You know you’re changing physically when you round out, gray up, slow down and turn in early and don’t see any comfortable way to stop any of it. It’s all part of growing older. You know you’re changing temperamentally when your teenaged daughter’s musical preferences begin to grow on you. You see it coming when you become less resistant to the sounds of the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC and 98º. Then you may have cause to worry, but never at the sacrifice of the “old music.” You know you’re changing spiritually when the old Jerusalem Gospel loses its appeal, when pointed sermons have lost their point with you and when liberalism has slowly crept in, taking you captive and you hardly seem to be aware of it.
Some change is natural. It is part of our physical makeup and goes along with God’s design. Like it or not, we are all changing. Some change is a good idea. A father needs to get along with his daughter. I may complain about some of the music my teenaged girls listen to, but my parents also disliked my beloved Carpenters thirty years ago. Some change is a definite mark of spiritual decline. This kind of change has affected the Lord’s church at large for years and is marking our general spiritual digression. This kind of change is destroying the distinctiveness of the Lord’s church, corrupting the pulpit by producing an uncertain sounds in many quarters, resulting in widespread spiritual slumber among us. Let’s fight this kind of change!
