How do I Change?

I was sitting on the floor with a group of college guys. There was the familiar, awkward silence of not many words filling the air. My friend chose to fill the silence. I don't know if he was just ending the silence or wanted to share, but his words deeply impacted me. Hoodie pulled over his head, he factually, glibly declared...."I'll never change."

As he sat on the ground in front of the pews of our church on a Saturday morning, he was convinced that the decisions that he had made to that point in his life had locked in the misery of life and that it would never change. That is a real place. The pull of that place is incredibly strong. And he may never change.

But can he change?

The days after that conversation led me to process that thought for myself. I was aware that exploring the ideas of how we would or could ever change in any given part of our life was really valuable for my own heart. What followed was four letters to me and my friend about how we would ever change.

Letter 1.

Greetings.

Facing my own heart has probably been the scariest, most challenging thing that I have ever been invited to do. Living life on the surface, talking about meaningless things, and pretty much just living my life like I’m in charge has been more predictable and safer. And honestly, it makes sense. It has also been more dead.. No life. Sad, not necessarily to other people’s eyes, but inside of my own soul, dead and sad.

“I won’t change”, you said. I think you were indicating that the path of your life, decisions you’ve made and your interactions with other humans has you pretty set that you’re locked in to life looking pretty similar from here on out. I took you seriously when you said those words that day. Perhaps you might say to me that I perceived them more seriously than you were saying them or that you were just talking because no one else was, but with no pressure for you to read, it is helping me to think through how I actually change.

My story has been strewn with difficult things that chose me (happened to me) and that I chose (willing choices, willful sin). Many of them have continual potential to affect me when I try to face it myself apart from Jesus in regards to how I will ever really change. Have my decisions and the circumstances of my life written a story for me that is done and over? Am I locked into a dead end place of dread and no change that will haunt me and ruin my life forever?

God is kindly teaching me.

I’ve read this book about how people change and the authors talk about four words that are involved in us changing. The first of the four words that they mention is “heat”. By heat they mean, “what is my situation as it relates to being opposed?” You (and I) are opposed. Born that way and then it rages on. Our hearts were born against God. “But what did I do….I was just a baby for Pete sake…”. And because we live in a sin affected planet, we are sin affected people and that is the state of my heart from the beginning. What’s even harder to grasp is that even if Jesus enters into relationship with you and you seek and realize His forgiveness for at least a moment, sin and evil are still at work in you so that we encounter the weight of our sinful heart and sinful decisions even while maybe in relationship with Jesus. Jesus is the changer, so without Him, it will not happen. If I just don’t care or if I insist on being solely in charge of changing, I’m doomed. So here’s to the hope and confidence that you (and I) are actually in relationship with Jesus. It is literally our only hope. It is honestly the only starting place for changing.

So this is the starting reality of being born opposed to God and then as we live our life, in or out of relationship with Jesus, there is still opposition raging to destroy us from within and without. And sometimes I am my own worst enemy in that reality. Because there is still battle within me, my choices at times are totally in line with the evil that so wants to destroy me. And upon acting on those sinful choices, I find myself in a deep, dirty gutter of hopelessness, sure that I will never overcome the consequence, and perhaps pattern, of my sinful acts and choices.

Weighty.

What next? Stay tuned.

There’s more.