The Spark of Transformation: It’s Not Working

From Woodstock to Eternity Excerpt:

When he was fourteen, he wanted to mock the rules of society and got his picture in the

From Woodstock To Eternity

From Woodstock To Eternity

paper for having long hair.  When he was sixteen, he snuck out of the house to hang out with the beatniks in Georgetown.  When he was eighteen, he went to Woodstock.  By the time he was twenty two, he had his own marijuana distribution network.  He got saved and started flying, but he never changed his stripes.  Everything he did in his adult life developed into a master plan to pursue the pleasures of the old world while reaping the benefits of the new.  Now, his plan is on trial, and the final verdict is obvious.  With a slab of sheet metal for a bed, and four walls of cinder blocks for a room, he has to admit to himself,

“It’s not working.”

Most Rehabilitation programs start with the acknowledgement that you need help.  Whether it is AA, Drug rehab, or Christian Ministries like Celebrate Recovery or Regeneration.  This is because, the One who is the power behind all Recovery, Jesus Christ, described the process in The Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.

Luke 15:17-19

17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have

In the Pig Pen

In the Pig Pen

bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 “and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” 

Before you can fix something in your own life, you have to admit that something is broken.  You will never move on to finding help and solutions without first coming to the conclusion that what you have been doing is not working.

Unfortunately, this process forces the difficult conclusion that we were wrong, and it sometimes takes a big hammer to break our pride enough to admit that.  For Dustin Morgan, God had to put him into a jail cell, with the threat of even greater jail time ahead if he didn’t change.

This is not a bad thing.  When you humble yourself and admit that what you have been doing is not working, God gives you grace and power and light to see the new direction.  That is why humility and brokenness is the Spark that ignites the Transformation.