Getting Comfortable With Change

The Challenge with Change

Change is normal

One of the realities we will all face is change. Everything that lives will change. From time a new baby is born to the seed that is placed in soil change is built into our process. We usually identify it by the words growth, evolution, maturity; all of these words are connected to change. John F Kennedy said “change is a law of life.” The reality is that the only things that are exempt from the requirement of change are the inanimate.

The book of Ecclesiastes begins with Solomon laying out that everything has a season. The writer lays out a rhythm in which change not only happens but is invitable.

Even Jesus coming to earth did not exempt himself from change. The Bible says Jesus grew. Growth is change. In all of His power Jesus chose not to skip any steps. Even He did not exempt Himself from change. If even Jesus saw change as important enough to go through it’s doors none of us will be able to avoid the process of change.

Change is hard

I remember when I moved from a country where the population totaled around 300K peeple to the US. I remember being an 18 year old feeling totally overwhelmed. That summer leading up to moving to college was full of fun and exitement. As much as I was looking forward to the change of going to college in the US; as much as I prayed about it and worked for it when I stood in the middle of it I was overwhelmed.

Sometimes when you stand face to face with the thing you prayed for you feel overwhelmed.

Many times we ask God for change to our circumstances not understanding that the change we ask for often times comes through challenge.

In Exodus 14 the Bible says “10 As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them. They cried out to the Lord, 11 and they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? 12 Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’ ”

Keep in mind these are the same people who in chapter 3 God said I seen their oppression and He heard theit cries.

God said I heard these same people yelling or their cries for distress

The same people who were yelling and screaming for change in their circumstance were now asking the agent of change “what have you done to us?”

You see often time the vehicle God uses to pick us up and deliver the change God desires for us takes us along a senic route.

If that route is not familiar to us fear can take hold where there was once acceptance of the idea of change and we now stand in anxiety due to the affects of change.

What happens when what you believe for is now causing you to question everything.

One of the constants Jesus was faced with was questions from the religous leaders. Time after time they would come some because they didn’t understand His Methods some because they misjudged His Motives and some because many because they stood opposed to His Mission.

Change will often show up in causing you to reevaluate your Methods. You ask questions like

Why and I doing the things I am doing?

Is this really the best course of actions

What could/should I be doing differently.

After checking your method change will also cause you to reassess your Motives.

Why do I want this?

What is driving me?

Is this what I really want

Finally change will ofen cause you to revisit your mission

What do I really want to accomplish?

Am I going after the right thing?

Do I need to change my objectives

John’s disciples where in the middle of change.

Their teacher that they followed and learned from was now arrested. The logical next step for them would be to follow the man that their Rabbi said was the one he was setting the stage for. Remember John’s mission was to prepare the way for Jesus to do His ministry.

John’s disciple were witnesses the change that John foretold. John said one is coming who was greater than I and here He is now.

There was one major problem. This Jesus was doing things differently from what they learned and had grown accustomed to.

What do you do when change causes you to question everything you have learned?

John’s diciples did the only thing they knew to do.

Their actions give us the template for how we should handle this very situation that will undoubtedly happen in our lives.

We all will encounter change. Sometimes that change will go against everything we have learned. It will challenge everything we hold dear. It will cause us to questions our deep held convictions.

John’s disciples went to Jesus.

Understand that the issue of fasting was a something that John’s diciples and the Phariees took seriously.

The law did include fasting as a good and required process. The law established that on the day of atonnement the people should go without food. That was the only established time the law set out. Fasting however was also observed as a sign of grief, repentance or mourning.

What the religious leaders did was to add on to the additional requirement. They made fasting into a sign of how devoted one was to the law. They now began to add religious or cultural significance to what God said and turned what God said into meaningless act.

This unfortunate reality was what Jesus would challenge the religious leaders about.

In Luke 11:46 Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden.”

Religion will always add on burdens and requirement that God does not place on His people. This is why it important that we establish a direct connection to God in order to know what He wants versus the burdens man has added. Religion will always be burdensome. Christ said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

Jesus in his response to John’s disciples takes the time to let them know that there was a unique transition happening that they were In danger of missing because they were reacting to the change by trying to fit it into the old context of the religious reqirements.

Rather than just launch into an anewer Jesus asked John’s disciples a question. The questions as a response to a question can seem like a non anser but what Jesus was doing wa involving them in the answer. . Jesus skillfully uses the analogy of a wedding and a groom something they would all be familiar with.

Jesus had to use what was familiar to them to break what was accustomed to them. He used a concept they were familliar with to challenge a practice they had grown accustomed to. The challenge is they are many things that we have grown accustomed to and have become our customs not because they are effective but because these customs have been passed on to us. There are many things we do because we saw our teachers do them. Whether our teachers were our family, our friends, our church or our coworkers. Customs and traditions can be passed to us and we accept them as the way to do things without giving thought to if these actions and ways of thinking are fruitful. Jesus asked the question what you are doing is it the right thing to do.

We all will should stop and ask that question. Is what you are doing fruitful? Is it working? Does it make sense? Are you seeing the results you want to see? Or is it time for a change.

Jesus then gives us some hints at some things that are likely to happen to happen in the change process.

The first thing He indicates can happen in the change process is there will be likely a contracting.

16 “Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.

There is a tendency in the misdt of change to attach it to something else you were doing. Change will often produce a feeling of instability. The natural instinct when stability is suddenly disrupted is to grab hold of something or to attach to something one thinks is stable. The challenge is that thing that we seek to attach to often isn’t strong enough to hold the weight of the new thing.

Jesus said No one patches old clothing with new clothing because the new clothes will shrink and rip the old. In other words there is a natural contraction that occurs as we embrace the change from the old to the new.

New cloth had not yet shrunk, and when it began to shrink after being patched onto a garment that had finished its shrinking, the patch would tear loose from the garment, making the tear worse

The contraction was represented in the fact that John’s disciples were doing something because of the old requirement or the religous expectations that they did not need to. They were burdened with an unrequired requirement that they could shed.

John’s disciples and the Pharisees were living under the Mitzvot or 613 Jewish laws plus all the religious customs and burdens that were placed on them and they were interm placing on others. This was an impossible standard to live up to.

This was the very reason Jesus came. In Matthew 22 Jesus contracted all of these laws into 2. From 613+ down to 2. In verse 37 it says 37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

I wonder how many things we are doing now because we are holding onto an old expectation that is not valid.

Jesus’ disciples were fasting less than John’s disciples because they had embraced a new way of thinking.

The second thing that will likely happen is there is an expansion that will happen

Jesus after he spoke in His parable about the cloth He went on to talk about wine and wine skins.

When wine ferments, it gives off gasses that stretch the wineskins. The gasses are a product of the change that the grapes are going through. What was being produces as a result of the change needed space to grow and expand.

Godly change produces an expansion that needs the right vessel to contain it. The new wine was place in fresh leather that would stretch and expand, but older leather has already stretched as much as it can. Fresh wine in old wineskins would burst the old leather.

Just as the new wine needed a new wine skin the change Jesus was bring about required a new housing, a new perspecticve, a new way of thinking. You cannot embrace the change Jesus is bringing about in your life by placing in the constraints of old thinking. The bible says in 2 Cor 5: 16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

Godly change will cause you to do less (contract) while you achieve more (Expand)

What was Jesus saying? The main point here was He was not trying to connect to the religious practices. His coming was a reset. He came to Change! A change that the religious leaders were fighting against. He was going against the systems, practices and ways of thinking that kept God’s people far from God. Jesus came to change the system.

It was a change that could not be connected to old fabrics. Fabrics of the old religion and old customs had stretched as far as they could. Jesus said do less. Leave the 613 laws and embrace 2. Love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength and then love your neighbor as yourself. Just those two. And in doing the two you would produce more as the wind (gas) of change cause you to be more effiective.

Just as Jesus challenged John’s disciples to embrace this change Jesus is calling on all of us to embrace Godly changes. What practices and habits are in our lives that are not producing results? What has been passed down to us that we embrace as law but really is just religious.

God is calling us to get comfortable with the change He desires to bring about in our lives.