Change means You're Alive!

Growing up, I could see my grandfather's house, and I could make the walk in five minutes. Grandad loved singing gospel music, calling his cattle in at feeding time, driving his tractor across a field. He had livestock I could feed, a knife I could whittle with, and a creek where the gang and I could get soaking wet looking for crawfish.

He was a family man who loved nothing more than getting his grown sons and daughters along with their families together for a big holiday meal. Perhaps that's why I still think of him often at holiday times.

My grandad was famous for his temper. He'd gone to church all his life, but in an occasional moment of fury with his back to the wall, he could say things he could never take back. Well, you can take those kinds of remarks back, but it's painful and embarassing. So the kind old man had a sister who lived half a mile away and attended the same small community church, but he never spoke to her. And he had a daughter who married a young man he had never approved. So she moved to Texas and had two lovely kids, but her father didn't see her again for years- until she came home after being diagnosed with cancer.

My grandfather wasn't happy about all this. The barriers he had erected caused a lot of pain and unhappiness in his life and among his family. But the old man simply had this problem with change: he resisted it. He was like a lot of people I know.

When folks come to my office with a serious problem, they often confess that I'm their last hope and they have nowhere else to turn. They've tried everything, they insist, but nothing has helped. When we talk for a while, I usually discover they haven't really tried everything; typically, they've tried one thing over and over again. I've been told that's the definition of insanity: trying the same thing year after year but expecting different results.

It's what you might expect of a condition called total depravity. But what does Paul mean when he says, "I am a new creation in Christ. The old has gone and the new has come." My experience has shown me that I have the same old tendencies, but I have a new master who has the power to help me be an overcomer. That term, overcomer, is used a lot in the New Testament. And it doesn't simply mean overcoming the behavior of wicked, wicked unbelievers. It also applies to the tendencies and temptations of people who know better.

I knew another man who selfishly pushed people away for years. One day he came to his senses and realized he was a major cause of unhappiness in his own life- and the lives of others. He identified the problem and asked Christ to give him the power to change. He became a different man and experienced joys and delights he had never been able to afford in his sin nature. It would have been a good lesson for my grandfather; a good one for all of us.

Living things are always changing. If you can still change, it means you're still alive.