I’ve learned or relearned a lot of things since the new grandbabies came. One is, you can never have enough pictures. Everything they do is photo worthy. Another thing I’ve learned is that they can’t tell you what they want. However, there is never any doubt when they want something. How can something that small be so loud?
But the one thing I have learned recently got me to thinking about how we phrase things. I had to learn all over again how to change a diaper. In the middle of one of those not-so-precious moments, it occurred to me, “I’m not changing this diaper, I’m exchanging it.” I didn’t change the dirty diaper into a clean one. I put a new one on in the place of the old one. Believe me, I wished I could have waved a magic wand and changed it. But I couldn’t. I had to exchange it.
At our two shelters, we often tell the men and women in our Addiction recovery program that they need to change their people, places and things. In other words, we can’t keep doing things the same we we’ve always done them and expect different results. And what we really mean is that they need to exchange them. For example, most of the time we can’t change other people, but we can exchange them. Sometimes, we just need to get out of a relationship.
In Romans 12:2, we are told to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” The idea of transformation and renewing indicates something brand new, not something renovated. We don’t just sand off the rust on our old mind, but rather we give our minds to God, and He exchanges it for a new one. That results in a new way of thinking. That new way of thinking leads us to hang out with different people, go different places and do different things.
What Jesus did for us on the cross made all this possible. The Bible says, “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin so that we could become the righteousness of God.” Jesus took our place so we could be made new. If we put our faith in Him, we become new creations. Now that’s what I call, the Great Exchange
