How Do People Change?
Change is never easy. Change for some people is difficult to accept. “Change is difficult because change means doing something new, something unusual, something not done before. It usually means exchanging old habit patterns for new ones. Such change is a threat. They are afraid of the unknown, and therefore unwilling to launch out into new adventures. But to a Christian, change should be thrilling rather than threatening.”[1] The process of change can be gut wrenching. Change is much like an amputation in that it…
- Is painful. – Any significant changes in our life will produce a type of pain. That pain may seem overwhelming and unbearable. The truth is that wounds heal and the strength will return.
- Is thorough. – We must make a complete break with sinful patterns in our life. We are to burn every bridge, and not turn back. “We must not part with sin, as with a friend, with a purpose to see it again and to have the same familiarity with it as before, or possibly greater…We must shake our hands of it as Paul did shake the viper off his hand into the fire” (Puritan Sermon, Richard Owen Roberts Publishers, page 53).
- Is worthwhile.[2]
Real change requires that we make radical decisions in our lives to become more like Christ. That may require us to change the people in our lives, the places that we frequent and even the things that we do, if we are going to be men and women who glorify God and seek to please Him in what we do.
