A funny thing happens when I ask God to show me something new in the scriptures: He does!! Why am I always surprised by that? I usually pray before I start studying because I know I can never get full benefit without God’s guidance, but this day, on a lark I asked God to show me something new. I was working on my BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) lesson and the passage was Exodus 20: The Ten Commandments. This is a really familiar passage and it’s way too easy to read over the verses instead of really reading them.

Many of us can remember these words, if not all of them, at least parts of them. God tells them, “I am the Lord your God… You shall have no other gods before me.” (vs 2-3). He continues to tell the Israelites and us that we are not to make idols or worship them (4-5), we are not to misuse the name of the Lord our God (ouch! Probably the one I struggle with the most.) (7), and we are to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. These are the commands that define our relationship with Him. Then God talks about the things that should define our relationships with others. We are to honor our parents (12), no murdering (13), no adultery (14), no stealing (15), no lying (16), and no coveting (17).

It was as I read the very last question in my lesson that I had my new thought. “What have you learned about God in this week’s study?” My first thought was similar to the fourth graders I taught in Sunday School a couple of years ago. I was substituting for their regular teacher and the lesson was all about Jesus. One of the opening questions was something like, What new thing do you want to learn about Jesus today? A couple of the kids, my son included, replied with answers that indicated they already knew everything about Jesus. They had been studying Jesus for years so there couldn’t be anything more to learn. Oh, to be 10 again…  Yet I do the same thing! “What have you learned about God in this week’s study?” My first thought was “these verses are so familiar, what new thing can I learn about God from this?” So much for being more mature than my son…

I have understood for awhile that everything God does is centered around offering and building a relationship with His people. Sometimes it is so hard to get my head around the fact that God desires a close relationship with me! It’s true, though. God went to great lengths to make relationship with Him possible and He desires us to choose to enter that relationship. So here’s the new thought He gave me: God does desire relationship with us, but that relationship must be on His terms. God will not let any part of the relationship be contaminated by things that go against His nature. I’ve known this in some form for a long time, but it seemed new and different to me today.

God lays it out so specifically. “You shall have no other gods before me.” He commands that we not make any idols, no images in any form, and that we not worship them. He also says we are not to misuse his name. I confess that I am not as big of a fan of the wording in the most recent NIV translation. When I was a kid, we memorized “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Since I didn’t really even know what that meant, I was good to go. Clarifying that terminology into “misusing His name” means that it stings every time I hear myself say, “Oh Lord”…

My point is that there is no negotiation here. These things are what we must do if we want to walk closely with God. If we try to be any other way and if He were to accept it, then His nature and His character would be forever changed. God loves us far more than we can ever comprehend, but He will not change for us. We must change for Him. As I pondered this I kept asking myself, what about me? Have I ever allowed my character to be altered within or because of a relationship? Well actually, yes; many times.

I have a close friend that I used to spend a lot of time with. She likes all things new and popular. She likes current fashion, current popular music, current popular trends, you get the idea. It’s not a bad thing, that is just very much her. I, on the other hand, still very much enjoy my favorite tunes from the 80’s, I often don’t pay much attention to current trends, I don’t tend to do a lot of clothes shopping (though I do enjoy shoes…), etc. I don’t want to be antiquated and out of the loop, but I’m not cutting edge either. In time, life and circumstance happened and now we don’t spend a lot of time together. We are still good friends, but that one on one time together isn’t there anymore.

Upon reflection, here’s what I have noticed. When I was spending a lot of time with my friend, we did a lot of shopping. We spent a lot of time talking about current trends and watching “What Not to Wear” (which taken in proper context was very helpful to me). She helped my modernize my style because I hadn’t really gone shopping for clothes for myself in years (yes, years! What was I thinking???). I started to focus a lot on what I was wearing and how I looked and if this outfit really worked for me. I wanted to look good! I wanted to make my friend happy. She was helping me to look better on the outside and I really did look better, a lot better. I was, and still am, very grateful for her help and her honesty with me.

What I’ve noticed in our time apart is that I don’t focus as much on style (which may or may not also have to do with the fact that after convincing me that straight legs are good and tapered legs are bad, now they want me to wear skinny pants… Ummm, no…). I don’t go shopping as often as I used to (except maybe for shoes…), I don’t spend as much time planning out my outfits, I’ve even noticed that I don’t care as much what other people think about the way I dress. Again, I don’t want to dress in a way that is markedly outdated, but I don’t care about being on the cutting edge of fashion. I was spending a lot of time with my friend and so I was becoming more like her. Once our time together was reduced, I started being more like the way I was before.

As I thought about the requirements God laid down with the 10 Commandments, I realized that this story about my friend and me is a superficial example of how spending time with other people changes me and most of the time, I don’t even realize I have changed. God made us to love people and we often love the things our loved ones love. My friend loves to shop and she brings excitement and enthusiasm to the experience. I started loving to shop because shopping with her was fun. I was becoming more like her.

If it’s important to them, it becomes important to me. I don’t think that is an inherently bad thing, but I do think I need to be careful. If I become someone different from the person God created me to be because I am trying to fit in or have something in common with someone else, I am walking away from God. I think this is what God was trying to get me to recognize in this passage of scripture.

In my relationship with God, God is so adamant that He will not change (a very good thing), that He won’t even let me approach Him if I’m in a sinful, dirty state. That’s why I so desperately need Jesus. My faith in Christ means that Jesus’ blood covers my sin and I can again approach God. God is not changed and I am forgiven. But it doesn’t end there. As I walk with God, He changes me. He remakes me in His image. He transforms my heart and my life so that I more resemble the person He really created me to be. I want to make time alone with God a priority because I like the me I become when I am with Him. We really do become like the ones we spend the most time with and I want to become more like Jesus.

How about you? Do you have a story of how you have changed when spending time in the presence of God or other people? Who is it that you desire to be most like?