“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” I love this quote and I agree that, if things are working smoothly, why upset the apple cart?? Sometimes we can jump from place to place looking for satisfaction instead of resting and being content. Contentment is something God wants us to learn. Change is usually difficult for most people. Many times change should happen and the apple cart should be upset but we are resistant. God desires for continual change and growth in our life, to ultimately look more like HIM.
Most humans love comfort and what is familiar, even if familiar is hard or difficult! On the “Back 9,” I have learned through my own personal experience what promotes REAL CHANGE! It is when “The pain of staying the same is GREATER than the pain of change.” Some would call it a wake up call. Unfortunately, some people have a “high pain tolerance” and so it takes a lot of pain to force change. I know of a person who had two DUI’s and jail time only to get out and kill someone while driving drunk. Now they are in prison for 40 years. I still don’t know if they have changed. I call that a “high pain tolerance.”
What I have personally experienced is being sick and tired of being sick and tired! Knowing, as a Christian, God has allowed this sick and tired feeling to promote the pain that drives the change. Does anyone know what I am talking about?????? It is when there is this “light straw” which is the last straw of a million that gets put on your back and cracks the “vertebrae” causing enough PAIN FOR CHANGE. You can’t move forward until you fix the break. I have found that in order for change to occur there has to be a motivator that “PUSHES” OR “FORCES” change. Nine times out of ten it involves extreme discomfort. Even to strengthen a muscle, you have to break it down to build it back up stronger.
I have never experienced change on my own. It has only been with the supernatural power of God in my life coupled with a pain motivator. Pleasure and comfort have never promoted change in me. In my own human weakness, as I have tried to change on my own, I have reverted back to old habits or places that have been familiar and comfortable but needed an overhaul. I’ve allowed the business of life to get in front of my personal time with God. Daily, the straws added up. Over time, the first one wasn’t heavy at all but load up several years of straws intermittently put on your back, and all those straws become very painful.
Another example is getting so busy that I stopped exercising. All my life I have been an exerciser. Slowly I gave up a day here or there. Let other things take a priority (some things mattered and some didn’t). Over time I found myself being out of shape when walking up a flight of stairs. For my entire life I have never even given thought to stairs!!! Or how about a “potty mouth”? It took a dear friend to call me out. The pain of embarrassment over someone younger than me calling me out. I had been a Christian a lot longer than them, but a “call out!!” nonetheless. I have to say it was very gentle and kind but convicting! There are others but these are a few painful circumstances that have brought me to a point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. The pain was great enough to endure the “pain of change!”
Are you like a dog? I was. Proverbs 26:11, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” Are you in pain and in need of a change? Repeating something that has become a pattern, not just a problem? Over time that “VOMIT” isn’t going to be appetizing. Just think about it. Is your “folly” (a.k.a. vomit) something that someone else is having to endure (i.e.. my potty mouth)? Looking in the mirror and getting REAL HONEST with yourself…taking off the rose-colored glasses that we tend to use in our owns lives to make the vomit look more appealing…taking a naked eye look…can promote enough pain for change.
Where does change start? Proverbs 27:19 says, “As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart.” Start with your heart. Real change starts there. Ask God to show you where you need to make some changes and lean on His strength to enable you to change.