Summary Post: 7 Key Ingredients to Change
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.—James 1:12
Though this series has been the most challenging for me to write, I am realizing that it is also the most foundational. For those of us who desire to see our faith transform our lives, it is critical.
So often, we focus merely on fixing the “outside,” for managing the horizontal—our lives here on earth, minimizing our sufferings, getting along with people well enough.
But from God’s vantage point, there is so much more.
We are made to worship Him. That is the hidden spiritual, vertical, truest purpose of our lives. When we get this right, we experience life.
However, when we get this wrong, we will experience stagnation in our spiritual life that then bleeds out into our lives, relationships, and direction.
Summarizing the Journey to Change
Over the past few weeks, though I haven’t been referring it to very often, we have been working through the “three trees” diagram. Let’s try to put all these together.
1. Recognize the gaps between your gospel profession and your real life.
What aspect of my life do I lack trust in God instead of trusting Him?
Where do I profess one thing but live another?
Where do I pursue and value other things instead of Him?
Where do I lack love and even hurt those who are closest to me instead of loving them as I love myself?
Where do I pursue my good instead of laying down my life for others?
What commands of God do I disregard or minimize instead of obeying?
In what ways do I look at my sufferings as God’s punishments instead of opportunities to grow in my sanctification?
Areas of change are the places we see this discrepancy and desire to move towards God. These can be actions, but don’t forget also the places we fall short in worship, attitude and character as well.
2. Submit yourself to God’s work of change in your life.
As long as we stubbornly cling to our own ways, we will not see change. As long as we retain the rights to rule our own lives, we will not see change.
This is a counter-cultural posture. But our worldview will shape how you look at this surrender. Instead of it being a burden, it becomes an opportunity to grow in Christlikeness.
Even our sins that cling to us. Even in our sufferings.
Submitting is hard. It takes faith and it takes courage. But the reward is great.
Bow your knee to the King. He loves you and will bless you as your offer yourself as a living sacrifice to Him.
3. Keep the big picture in mind: becoming like Christ.
This is the end goal of change. It is not our convenience, so that people like us better, or so that we can get ahead in the world. The world may aim for these things but we have a far greater goal: one that we are ultimately designed for.
While the world’s self-help gurus aim to make you the best version of yourself, those of us who have submitted our lives to a new King and Master will be about something even greater: being a copy of Christ, the ultimate version of humanity.
As we seek first His Kingdom’s values, this changes how we interpret life. We begin to see our sufferings as opportunities for us to grow in faith. Instead of leaning into the temptation to doubt His goodness, we learn to see these seasons of trial as invitations to experience His comfort firsthand as we lament the griefs and pains of life here.
We will also see our sins as offensive to God. Out of love for Him, we will seek to divest ourselves of them. Not only that, we will want to pursue righteousness instead. In this way, we will become like Him.
For this is truly the best version of ourselves: people who are remade to think, feel, and choose as our Creator intended us to be. Sin made it impossible, but with faith in Christ born through the Gospel, we are able to actually become who we were made to be.
4. Depend on the Holy Spirit to change you, from start to finish.
The first change happened when our eyes were opened to the truth of Scripture. By the Spirit’s enabling, God’s Word finally makes sense! We understood the message, recognized it was talking to us, and responded in remorse to God for our sins.
However, this is only the first step, but it is the domino that starts unleashing all the others in our lives.
That process is in very slow motion, to be sure. It is not instantaneous. But once the Holy Spirit begins to change us, He will begin to start spreading His influence into every corner, every nook and cranny of our hearts.
So in this journey of change, don’t be surprised when you find Him knocking around in areas of your heart that you thought were safe or even pretty good.
Through the “heat” of our lives, He begins to shine the light in those sacred corners and reveal to us areas of impurity and perversity that we may not even realize in ourselves. As life squeezes on us, we react with ungodly thoughts and emotions that are expressed in our choices. These reveal those areas of our hearts that need transformation.
But the good news is this: God never reveals our hearts without an intention to do us good. If He shows us something about us, it is always for our benefit—our metamorphosis and transformation. He will do that beautiful work, so we can submit to Him.
5. Trace your ungodly responses back to understand the heart beneath them.
As we can identify a tree by its fruits, so we can identify the areas of our heart that need His transformation by looking at our outward responses. Even if we do nothing outwardly wrong—or even if we do what looks right but with the wrong motives—the Holy Spirit helps us to tease out what is rotten underneath.
This, admittedly, is a hard process and not very pleasant. But if we truly want to grow and change in Christlikeness, wouldn’t we want to know these things?
God knows that these things, left unaddressed, will cause great damage in the long run—to ourselves, to others, to our kingdom witness. So it is actually a grace and kindness for Him to point these out to us.
Not only do we receive His discipline willingly, growing Christians will even invite Him to reveal those areas. Like David in Psalm 139:23-24, we will pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
6. Learn to constantly bring yourself to the cross and cling to the Gospel for the power we need to change.
True change happens when we recognize that it is not by our own means that transformation happens. In fact, it is the opposite.
When we recognize the depth of our sin, we also see the greatness of our debt to God. Like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 and David in Psalm 51, we admit that our greatest offense in sin is straying from His command to love Him above all and to love our neighbor. All our sins in some way violate these two commandments.
Before we can move forward, a growing believer will recognize the need we have to bow before the Father. When we reconcile with God, we are set free once again to live in communion with Him and grow in Him.
Though He does not withdraw His love from us during these times of sin, there are still side effects as we grieve the Spirit and harden our hearts to His voice. Even if we are not the one doing the sin, our response to the sin done to us can have likewise detrimental effects. In these moments, we need to repent of our sinful response to another’s sin towards us.
7. Look for specific ways to respond in godly fruitfulness in the midst of the heat.
Finally, we get to something we can do! Most other therapy or counsel bypass steps 2-6 and go from identifying the gap to making a change. But often times, those changes are, at best, short-lived.
The first way we can respond is by turning to God in repentance, but we can also begin to take steps of faith and trust. Instead of clinging to our own means of dealing with our problems, we begin to learn how to turn to Him first instead of last. Not only that, we can learn to thank God for our troubles and ask Him to help us see His hand in the midst of them.
Another way to respond is to consider what we can put off and put on. Are there things we can do to remove the temptation or pursue righteousness? These can be spiritual disciplines and habits that we begin to practice to help us grow in faith and righteousness.
Lastly, we can respond by asking what changes we need to make in our responses to others. Are there ways I can stop acting selfishly? Are there ways I need to learn to die to myself? Are there ways I can do good? Are there points where I lack integrity?
All these questions are important. We will want to change our behavior.
But we don’t start here. We end here.
I wrote this series to follow up on the planning series I wrote previously. While I believe in the importance of stewarding our time well, the value of setting goals and creating habits, projects, and plans to accomplish them, I also knew that these were not the end game. We need the inner core of our hearts transformed first so the changes we make are motivated by a love for God and a dependence on His work in us through Christ. Then we can keep moving forward, especially when we feel weak, unmotivated, or discouraged by our failures.
You Can Change
This is real change. Other therapies might help you manage stress better, have healthier relationships or feel less pain but God desires more.
When God is at work, He turns us into the people He designed us to be. He closes the gap between our confessions and our character. We become authentic people living in integrity with what we believe.
This is possible through Christ, who restored us to right relationship with Him. By the cross, our sins are removed and we are made righteous. As we marvel and worship what He has done for us, we are motivated to become like Christ.
When this empowers us, we will truly change from the inside out. The transformation is long and slow, the metamorphosis often unseen by everyone else.
But one day, God will finish that work. The gap will be closed. And we will truly be perfect when we see Him again face to face.
